Call Of Duty Isn't The Best-Selling Game Of The Year, Breaking A 5-Year Tradition

screenrant.com:

For the first time in five years, has failed to be the best-selling game in the United States. The Activision-published series has become a yearly blockbuster event in the gaming industry, but even impressive – if expected – sales of weren't enough to top the 2023 sales chart. It was Avalanche Software's which managed to unseat the reigning franchise, usurped by another incredibly popular media property.

Sales figures come courtesy of, which cites Circana for its US sales data. This marks the first time a game wasn't the year's bestseller since took the prize in 2018. Even then, once again took second place.

According to the infographic, topped a US bestsellers category in which 10 games were listed:

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managed to earn the most sales in the United Kingdom as well, but the market in Japan was dominated by Nintendo Switch titles lead by. Interestingly, has an asterisk in the infographic denoting that its digital sales were not included. Nintendo tends not to disclose digital sales numbers, and accounting for physical-only not only makes its bronze medal in the US more impressive, but suggests it potentially could have earned one of the top two spots if digital sales had been tallied.

Second place can't be considered any sort of failure, especially considering residual sales of 2022's propelled it to 2023's seventh place (although this isn't quite as impressive as in 2020 or 2021, when games were both the bestseller and the runner-up). It speaks more to the continued popularity of the brand, otherwise referred to as the franchise. In fact, 's accomplishment is quite an outlier considering the other titles that managed to beat in sales since the series began yearly releases.

Since the original was released