Circana: The US gaming market in November 2024 earned 7% less than a year earlier
Two remarkable milestones were achieved last month.
Overall market condition
$5.755B was the revenue of the American gaming market in November 2024. A year ago it was $6.171 billion - 7% more.
Game content sales fell by 9% compared to last year. This is largely because Modern Warfare III was released in November’23, while Black Ops 6 was released in October’24. Growth in mobile and subscription PC/console segments was offset by a 29% drop in console revenue.
User spending on PC/console subscriptions in November increased by 8%. The main growth driver is Game Pass, and the appearance of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in the subscription.
Sales of gaming systems remained at the same level, even slightly increased. PlayStation 5 spending increased by 15% (this is the month’s leader); Nintendo Switch sold 3% worse than last year’s numbers; Xbox Series S|X - 29% worse than a year earlier.
The PlayStation 5 Pro accounted for 19% of all PlayStation devices sold in November and 28% of the money. Sony earned 50% more in dollar terms at the start, compared to the launch of PS4 Pro in November 2016, selling 12% fewer consoles.
❗️Nintendo Switch sales reached 46.6 million and surpassed PlayStation 2 sales in the US. Now the console is second only to the Nintendo DS.
Accessory sales increased to $373 million, up 4%. Growth was driven by an 8% increase in the gamepad segment.
Based on the results of 11 months of 2024, the market is still slightly ahead of 2023. But the difference is minimal - everything will be decided in December.
During this period, 9.4 million gaming systems were sold - significantly less than 11.8 million for 11 months of 2023.
Consider subscribing to the GameDev Reports Premium tier to support the newsletter. Get access to the list of curated articles & archive of Gaming Reports that I’ve been collecting since 2020.
Game sales
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Madden NFL 25 and EA Sports FC 25 are the most successful games of the month in dollar terms on PC and consoles. New releases - Mario & Luigi: Brothership (7th place - excluding digital copies); Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (12th place) and My Sims: Cozy Bundle (19th place).
EA Sports College Football 25 is the best-selling game of the year so far in 2024 in the US. ❗️Moreover, it is the most successful sports game in the country’s history in dollar terms. The project also made it into the list of the 50 most successful games in history of the US market.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 climbed to 2nd place in the 2024 chart; Helldivers II is in third place.
Leaders of the mobile segment in terms of revenue in November 2024 - Monopoly GO!; Royal Match and Roblox. Pokemon TCG Pocket immediately entered the top 10 (6th place).
Rankings by platform
In the November charts for sales on PlayStation and Xbox, everything is stable - Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Madden NFL 25, EA Sports FC 25, EA Sports College Football 25 and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero are in the first places.
On Nintendo Switch, there are three new releases in the chart at once - Mario & Luigi: Brothership (2nd place - excluding digital sales), My Sims: Cozy Bundle (3rd place) and Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake (8th place).
On PlayStation, the MAU charts are stable, but on Xbox, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl made it to 6th place. The game was released on Game Pass from day one. Genshin Impact was also released on Microsoft’s console - and entered the 10th place in MAU.
Counter-Strike 2, Helldivers II and Call of Duty are the leaders in MAU on Steam. Interestingly - Monster Hunter: Wilds is in 4th place; Webfishing is in 8th place and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is in 9th place. The game is not available by subscription here, so we can conclude that the project sold well.
