4% December sales boost sees 2023 finish up 1% year-over-year | US Monthly Charts
After 2022 saw US spending on games dip 5%, 2023 saw a return to growth, according to the latest figures from industry-tracking group Circana.
Total US spending on games was up 1% to $57.2 billion in 2023, with slight gains in software, add-ons and subscriptions (up 1% to $48 billion) and accessories (up 4% to $2.6 billion) offsetting essentially flat hardware sales (down a fraction of a percent to $6.59 billion).
Circana had Hogwarts Legacy as the best-selling game of the year in terms of dollar sales. That marks the first time that the top game was neither Call of Duty nor a Rockstar-developed game since 2008, when Rock Band and its pricey peripheral-loaded packages took the honors.
On the full-year hardware front, PS5 was the best-selling platform of the year in units and dollars. Sony's system saw its dollar sales grow as the Xbox Series X|S and Switch saw theirs drop.
Switch was the second-best-selling console of the year in both units and dollars.
Accessories saw the largest growth in 2023, driven by a 7% jump in gamepad sales, with the PS5 DualSense Edge being the year's best seller when it came to dollar sales.
Looking at December specifically, the industry finished the year on a comparatively strong note with total spending up 4% to $7.9 billion.
Spending on games content was up 3% to $5.73 billion, with hardware up 4% to $1.6 billion. Accessories enjoyed the largest leap of the month, with sales up 14% to $584 million, with game pad sales again driving the growth, up 21% year-over-year.
The PS5 led the hardware category in December much as it did for the full year, posting record-high dollar sales for the system during the month. The Xbox Series X|S also saw growing sales for the month that partially offset a double-digit percentage drop in Switch dollar sales.
As for what people played in December, Fortnite claimed the largest unique monthly active users on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S for the month, with 36% of active Sony users and 31% of active Xbox users playing
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