U.S. Video Game Spending Reached $5.1 Billion in January 2024
The latest data from Circana revealed the best-selling and most-played games from January 2024.
The latest data from Circana showed U.S. spending on video game hardware, content, and accessories reached $5.1 billion in January 2024, which was a year-over-year increase of 15%. In Circana’s data, “video game content” accounts for digital and physical games, as well as DLC / MTX and subscriptions across consoles, the cloud, mobile devices, portable devices, PC, and VR platforms. The mobile spending data was provided by Sensor Tower.
While overall spending was up, Circana found hardware spending fell in January 2024 to $378 million, a 4% decrease from January 2023.
While there was a significant overall boost in spending in January when compared to the beginning of 2023, it’s worth noting that Circana’s January 2024 tracking period lasted five weeks, while the January 2023 tracking period only had four weeks.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) was the best-selling game in the U.S. in January 2024, followed by Tekken 8, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, P3: Persona 3: Reload, and Madden NFL 24 in the top five.
Breaking down the best-selling games by platform, Circana’s data found Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III (2023) was the best-selling game on PlayStation and Xbox platforms in the U.S. in January 2024, while Super Mario Bros. Wonder was the best-selling game on Nintendo platforms in the U.S. last month.
Fortnite was the most-played game on PlayStation 5 in the U.S. last month, when ranked by monthly active users (MAU). Fortnite was followed by Call of Duty HQ and Grand Theft Auto V (Remastered) in the top three.
By MAU, Fortnite was also the most-played game on Xbox Series consoles in the U.S. in January 2024, followed by Call of Duty HQ and the breakout hit Palword in positions two and three, respectively.
Speaking of Palworld, Circana found the monster-collection game was the most-played game on PC marketplace Steam in the U.S. in January, when ranked by monthly active users. Palworld launched into Early Access on January 18, 2024, and, according to Windows Central, reached more than two million concurrent players on Steam by January 24.