It’s no surprise that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 would help boost sales, as it’s one of the most popular and best-selling game franchises out there. As a result, US games consumer spending is rising once more in the month of October, with the sales being boosted nicely by the launch of Call of Duty. This information comes from Circana’s monthly report, which says that hardware, software, and accessories sales combined have gone up by 10% year-on-year for a sum of $4.7 billion. Activision confirmed with The Washington Post that with the inclusion of Black Ops 6, the franchise as a whole surpassed 500 million units sold. This statistic makes it one of the best-selling game franchises of all time.
Content represented $4.23 billion of that sum, which is a 12% rise compared to October 2023. Hardware sales were down by 23%, making it a sum of $249 million.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 launched and immediately hit number one in the October charts, becoming the third best-selling game of 2024 to date. Subscription spending also increased, which can also be attributed to Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, as this was the first game in the franchise to be a day-one release on Game Pass. In the report, Circana stated that non-mobile subscriptions grew by 16% compared to last year, making it evident that Black Ops 6 played a massive part in this. Xbox further verified this information, as they announced that the title was breaking records for Game Pass subscriptions at the end of October.
The report also goes on to mention that console content was the biggest contributor to the rise in content spending, providing a 27% increase compared to the same period last year, with the rise being driven by digital full-game sales. Again, Black Ops 6 is to thank for this. Confirmed by Circana’s Mat Piscatella, it’s been confirmed that PlayStation platforms accounted for 82% of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 total console full game dollar sales during October.
“Over its first two weeks in market, full game dollar sales of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 were 23% higher than the full game dollar sales of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 over its first two weeks in a market a year ago,” says Piscatella. Overall, this information isn’t too much of a surprise, as Modern Warfare 3 wasn’t as well received as Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been.
Along with the new Call of Duty, games like Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero, Silent Hill 2, and Metaphor: ReFantazio were amongst the top-selling games from October 6 to November 2.
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