US sales in October have been dominated by PS5 and Spider-Man 2 but consoles sales across the board have see a worrying decline.
The recent movies have helped secure Spider-Man’s position as the most popular superhero in the world but even with that proviso it’s easy to underestimate just how successful Insomniac’s recent games have been.
Just the like the original, Spider-Man 2 was the fastest selling Sony exclusive of all time and after success in the UK charts it’s now been confirmed as the best-selling game of October in the US, and by what seems to be a significant margin.
That means it beat Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which released on the same day, although Nintendo is unlikely to be upset as the Switch had a good month anyway, managing to outsell the Xbox Series X/S and forcing it into third place in term of hardware.
As straightforward as that sounds there’s a host of caveats to all of this information, for the simple reason that publishers don’t want you to know how well their games sold, and do everything to make what little data they release as unclear as possible.
The first thing to note is that American charts are organised by revenue, not units sold, and Spider-Man 2 is more expensive than Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Also, unlike most publishers, Nintendo does not release digital sales information.
We know from Mat Piscatella at chart compiler Circana (NPD), that Super Mario Bros. Wonder wouldn’t have beaten Spider-Man 2 even with digital sales included but what we don’t know is whether it would’ve beaten it in terms of unit sales.
It probably didn’t though, as in the UK Spider-Man 2 also outsold Super Mario, only for Nintendo’s game to overtake it the week after. According to Piscatella, Spider-Man 2 also beat the original 2018 game by double-digits (i.e. at least 10%).
U.S. all formats chart - October 2023
1 (-) Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (PS5)
2 (-) Super Mario Bros. Wonder (NS)*
3 (-) Assassin’s Creed Mirage (XO/PS4/XSX/PS5/PC)
4 (4) EA Sports Madden NFL 24 (XO/PS4/XSX/PS5/PC)
5 (3) EA Sports FC 24 (XO/PS4/NS/XSX/PS5/PC)
6 (2) Mortal Kombat 1 (NS/XSX/PS5/PC)
7 (-) EA Sports UFC 5 (XSX/PS5)
8 (-) EA Sports NHL 24 (XO/PS4/XSX/PS5)
9 (-) Sonic Superstars (XO/PS4/NS/XSX/PS5/PC)
10 (9) Hogwarts Legacy (XO/PS4/NS/XSX/PS5/PC)
*does not include digital sales
In the US, the gap between the two can be better visualised if you consider that Spider-Man 2 instantly became the fourth best-selling game of the year, while Super Mario Bros. Wonder is only the 21st highest – although again that doesn’t include digital sales and is organised by revenue.
(Hogwarts Legacy, released at the start of the year, is still the best seller, although Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is in second place even though its digital sales are unknown.)
Assassin’s Creed Mirage also did impressively well, despite being much smaller scale than recent games, which may influence Ubisoft’s thinking in the future; while EA had no less than four of its sports title in the top 10.
There’re no sales figures for any of this and that includes hardware, but we do know that the PlayStation 5 was the biggest seller of the month, followed by the Nintendo Switch, and then the Xbox Series X/S.
However, the last two do flip if you measure them by revenue, since the Xbox Series X is much more expensive than a Switch.
Even with that minor victory though it’s not been a great month for the Xbox Series X/S, as it enters its third year in its biggest market. Starfield, which fell to number 14 in the charts this month (and from number one to number four in the Xbox most played charts) seems to have had just as little effect on sales in the US as it did in Europe.
It’s difficult to know what Nintendo will make of the results, as most observers expect the Switch to be superseded by a new console next year and yet it’s clearly still selling well – even if nowhere near as well as a couple of years ago.
There may be a general problem though, in the US market, as there was a 23% decline in all hardware sales this month, with all consoles seeing a double digit drop. This should be one of the peak years for the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5, so that is not a healthy sign.
Or perhaps everyone is just waiting for Black Friday as, unlike the previous two years, it’s clear there’s going to be some major console discounts and bundles.
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