The annual Call of Duty game always sells extremely well – it has taken the top spot of November for five years straight – so today's results are no surprise. However, what's new this time around is that Modern Warfare III is now an Xbox-owned game, after Microsoft successfully completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a colossal $69 billion. Also, notably, despite Modern Warfare III reviewing poorly – it has a 56 on Metacritic, the lowest of the rebooted Modern Warfare series, and received a 5 out of 10 from Game Informer – it's still selling very well, per usual.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III was the best-selling game of November, instantly becoming the 2nd best-selling game of 2023 year-to-date. It is the 5th consecutive year that a Call of Duty title was November’s best-seller (Red Dead Redemption II ranked 1st in Nov 2018).
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
However, on both PlayStation and Xbox, it was the second most-played game of the month, behind Fortnite, which is free-to-play, on both platforms.
Here are the top 10 best-selling games of November 2023:
* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
* Marvel's Spider-Man 2
* Hogwarts Legacy
* Madden NFL 24
* Super Mario Bros. Wonder
* EA Sports FC 24
* Super Mario RPG
* Mortal Kombat 1
* NBA 2K24
* UFC 5
And here are the top 10 best-selling games of 2023, year-to-date:
* Hogwarts Legacy
* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
* The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
* Marvel's Spider-Man 2
* Madden NFL 24
* Diablo IV
* Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
* Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
* Mortal Kombat 1
* Starfield
In terms of platforms, the PlayStation 5 remained the best-selling hardware platform in both unit and dollar sales for November. Xbox Series X/S came in second for both measures. The newly released PlayStation Portal was the fourth best-selling platform of November.
Overall, U.S. consumer spending on video game content, hardware, and accessories fell 7 percent compared to this time last year, to $5.9 billion. Circana executive director Mat Piscatella says this decline was driven by a 24 percent drop in hardware spending, to $964 million, and a 3 percent dip in content, to $4.6 billion.
"All current generation consoles experienced a dougle-digit percentage decline in dollar sales when compared to a year ago, with Nintendo Switch showing the sharpest drop year-on-year," Piscatella writes on Twitter.
For more, check out October 2023's best-selling games and then read the September 2023 video game spending results after that. Read Game Informer's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III review and then find out what we thought of Hogwarts Legacy.
Have you been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III? Let us know what you think of it in the comments below!
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