Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 drove October’s sales growth | Circana

Despite an overall downward trend in sales throughout 2024, October managed to show positive growth, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. This appears to be thanks, in part at least, to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which was the best-selling game of the month — however, it was just one of many October titles to make it on the month’s list.

Hardware sales are still down, but not to the extent that they have been in previous months. In September, hardware sales fell by 44% year-over-year, while they fell 23% in October. Unlike last month, overall game sales and content sales didn’t trend downward — in fact, overall sales rose by 10%, the highest amount of growth since July.

Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports, said in a statement, “Video game content spending increased by 12% versus a year ago, reaching $4.2 billion. Console content was the biggest contributor to the overall gain, with a spending increase of 27% when compared to a year ago, fueled by digital full game sales. Non-mobile video game subscription spending increased by 16% when compared to a year ago. The release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 as part of Xbox Game Pass was the primary growth driver.”

According to Piscatella, sales for all of the major consoles were down, with Switch sales dropping the most at 38% year-over-year, PlayStation 5 sales by 20% and Xbox Series sales by 18%. Accessories spending, on the other hand, increased, with the PlayStation Portal holding its place as the best-selling accessory.

Circana October 2024: Top 20 best-selling games in the U.S.

It’s probably not a surprise to see Call of Duty take the top spot — it’s practically a tradition for the launch month of each new game in the series. It’s almost more of a surprise that Black Ops 6 didn’t immediately displace EA Sports College Football 25 or Helldivers 2 from the year-to-date best-sellers list, though perhaps that’s due to this Circana report only having a few days of sales with which to work.

Circana’s information indicates Black Ops 6 isn’t just a successful game, but it’s also done better than Modern Warfare III did last year: Full game dollar sales for the former were 23% higher than the latter over its first two weeks on the market. Piscatella explicitly says the increase in total video game sales year-over-year is “driven primarily by the debut of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as compared to the launch of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) during the November tracking period a year ago.”

The rest of October wasn’t too shabby either

Call of Duty may have dominated October’s best-seller list, but it’s far from the only new game to make it onto the list. Nine new games made it onto the list and take up eight of the top 10 slots. Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero! is the second best-selling game of the month, and is the 3rd best-selling Bandai Namco-published game in history, behind Elden Ring and Dark Souls III. It’s also the only game of the nine on the monthly list to join Black Ops 6 on the year-to-date best-seller chart.

Similarly, Silent Hill 2 Remake debuted at 3rd place and is the 2nd-best-selling Silent Hill game of all time, behind only the original Silent Hill 2. Other major October releases, including Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Super Mario Party: Jamboree, Sonic X Shadow Generations and Life is Strange: Double Exposure all benefit from their brand recognition, but Metaphor: ReFantazio manages to jump up the list as a new IP. Perhaps the most impressive entry on the list is Undisputed, the boxing game and debut title from Steel City Interactive.

Circana October 2024: 20 best-selling games of 2024 so far

As stated above, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero! were the only October games to make it to the year-to-date list, but debuting at 3rd and 4th place, respectively, isn’t a bad result. Given November and holiday sales, Black Ops 6 may even move further up the ranks.