Hogwarts takes the EOY crown. People really love the Potter. Keep in mind it took them most of the year to even get the game onto all platforms. PS4/Xbox One were not released until May, and Switch was in November.
This is a very unique result too, as Call of Duty has been a repeat sales winner year after year. That said, it finished second even though it was a release with an unloved single player campaign by many fans and all the multiplayer maps are remakes of “classic” maps. It’s the first CoD I haven’t bought on day one since Black Ops III.
Also, when it comes to hardware it was PS5, Switch, then Series. That is in both dollars and units.
Hogwarts game seems to be the only title that’s been penetrating and generated talk on every gaming online community I’m floating around*. It’s great it has been doing so well, I was under the impression it didn’t, probably because of those fragmented releases Dave pointed out, and that was obviously a wrong impression.
I’m surprised Mortal Kombat is so far ahead of Street Fighter, doubly so since I think it released months later. Street Fighter always seemed like the bigger franchise to me, despite me preferring Mortal Kombat when I was a kid.
I wonder why Minecraft is listed as “Multiple Video Game Manufacturers”, as opposed to Microsoft?
Does Sony publish Minecraft on Playstation and Nintendo publishes it on the Switch or some arrangement like that?
Dissensus: Yeah, I’m surprised to see that too. My perception from the gaming press and message boards was that Mortal Kombat is very popular, but this Street Fighter hit it out of the park compared to previous entries whereas this MK stumbled a bit compared to MK X and 11.
Mortal Kombat is a quality release this time around, but I also think it’s specifically a US thing. MK has consistently outperformed Street Fighter in the US in sales if the game itself is quality. People here love the dismemberment. *vomit smiley*
Also, I think MK has gotten more promotion than SF6 in the States. There’s also a recent film for the Mortal Kombat series (with a sequel on the way) that undoubtedly brought people out to buy MK1.
Yeah, I don’t know what digital stores they are reporting, but I doubt the official MS/Sony/Nintendo/Steam stores are included as those don’t report detailed results to the public.
So this isn’t going to be representative of the actual full market.
Jason Schreier in Bloomberg’s Game On newsletter noted these limitations:
Circana relies on publishers to report their sales figures, and a lot of them do it imperfectly. Nintendo Co., for example, only reports physical sales to Circana and not the digital sales that make up a large chunk of today’s market. Blizzard Entertainment sells its PC games through its own platform, Battle.net, which isn’t reported — nor are sales from the Epic Games Store, where critical darling Alan Wake 2 was released. Larian Studios, the Belgian company behind last year’s beloved Baldur’s Gate 3, doesn’t report to Circana at all.
Yeah, I was going to say that Diablo would probably be several spots higher if “real” numbers were used. Battle.net was probably a huge chunk of sales.
