Tekken 8 takes silver in 2024’s opening salvo | Circana January 2024

Tekken 8 is the top-selling new game in January, though it can’t quite dethrone Modern Warfare 3, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. The fighting game was one of several January releases that made the best-sellers list, but the third-place game was actually Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, which just squeaked in at the end of the reporting period (February 3; the game launched on February 2). Meanwhile, overall sales in the industry have gone up by 15% year-over-year.

“Growth in digital content spending across Console, PC and VR platforms, along with a 5% increase in mobile games spending (mobile source: Sensor Tower) led the way,” said Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports. He noted that January 2024 has a five-week reporting period, as opposed to last year’s four weeks, which might explain the dramatic increase.

Most of the growth comes from the games content itself, as hardware sales have dropped off. While it’s not as dramatic a decline as the 24%-ish decreases we saw in late 2023, it’s still worth noting. Accessories, on the other hand, are off to a strong start for the year, as they show a 45% increase in sales compared with last January.

“Gamepad spending increased by over 50% year-on-year,” said Piscatella. “The PlayStation 5 Dual Sense Edge was the best-selling video game accessory of January in dollar sales.” He also noted that the PlayStation Portal fell under accessories and was the 5th best-selling accessory in January.

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

Six new releases for January appeared in the best-seller list, up from four last January (back when Circana was the NPD Group). Tekken wins in sales, making it to second place behind Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League manages to reach third place despite the aforementioned closeness to the end of the reporting period. Other releases that made the list include Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reloaded and Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash.

Circana also released new best-seller lists for the individual platforms — PlayStation, Nintendo and Xbox. On the main list, The Last of Us: Part II made it to ninth place due to the release of the remastered version on January 19. It also made sixth place on the PlayStation charts, up from spot 51 last month. Many of the new releases also made the platform lists, though Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown only charted on Nintendo’s list.

Gamers played a lot of Palworld in January

The other data Circana published was its player engagement trackers, which charted the top 10 games played by monthly active users on PlayStation, Xbox and Steam. Piscatella noted that Palworld developer Pocketpair was not part of Circana’s reporting panel, meaning its sales aren’t counted on the list. However, the game appears on both Xbox’s and Steam’s engagement trackers, in third and first places, respectively.

Other surprise contenders on the list include Evil West, which is seventh on PlayStation’s list, up from spot 378 the month before. On the Xbox chart, Hell Let Loose made eighth place from spot 168. In both cases, this is likely due to the game’s inclusion on the platform’s subscription service — PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass, respectively. Survival game Enshrouded was the only new game to make it onto the Steam engagement tracker besides Palworld.