Circana confirms Black Ops 6 is 2024's biggest hit, but overall game spend in the US falls 9% YoY
Circana has published its December 2024 US recap, revealing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 finished the year as the best-selling premium game of both the month and, indeed, the whole of 2024.
This makes Activision's Call of Duty franchise the best-selling series for a record 16th consecutive year.
Roblox also "had a great December," with consumer spend up 24% over November and spiking sharply on Christmas, clocking up nearly $12 million in US mobile consumer spend.
Although Christmas is "the biggest day of the year for Roblox every year," Sensor Tower posits that this year's Christmas was "especially huge," bringing in 35% more US consumer spend this year than last.
Furthermore, according to Circana’s December report, 2024 projected US consumer spending on video game hardware, content, and accessories declined 8.9% to $7.5 billion compared to a year ago, with overall US consumer spend on the total video game market also falling 1.1% to $58.7 billion compared to $59.2 billion in 2023.
*projected to total market
**December 30 2023-January 4 2025
Player spend on games content and hardware is also down - 5% and 29%, respectively - whilst video game accessory spend remains flat year-over-year.
The analysis reports that a 21% drop in content spending on console when coupled with a 1% decline in mobile offsets the 13% growth elsewhere in PC, cloud, and non-console VR.
The huge drop in hardware spend year-on-year is most noticeable for Xbox and Nintendo, with both the Xbox Series and Switch declining by 38%, and Sony's PS5 by 18%.
49% of PS5 and 43% of Xbox Series hardware sold in December did not include a physical disc drive, with the former cementing itself as the US' third-biggest console in terms of lifetime sales, now trailing only Switch and Xbox 360.
PlayStation Portal was the best-selling accessory both in December 2024 and across the whole of last year, although the in terms of actual units sold, the PS5 DualSense controller tops both periods.
Whilst Black Ops 6 topped the
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