US Sees EA Sports College Football as Best-Selling Sports Game of All Time

According to the latest Circana report, Electronic Arts' college football game has achieved the highest dollar sales in US history for a sports video game. The game, EA Sports College Football 25, also ranks among the top 50 best-selling games of all time in terms of dollar sales and is currently the best-selling game of the year in the US. Price promotions have driven the game back into the top ten of the monthly charts, with only Madden NFL 25 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 surpassing it. The absence of a new Call of Duty game in November contributed to a 7% year-over-year decline in spending, totaling $5.8 billion. In contrast, November 2024 faced a challenging comparison with the launch month of Modern Warfare 3 in the previous year, while Black Ops 6 was released in October. The latest Call of Duty game is the second best-selling title of 2024 so far. The biggest new release in November was Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which debuted at number seven, although this figure does not include digital sales due to Nintendo's data sharing policies. Other new releases in the top 20 included the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest 3 at number 12 and EA's My Sims: Cozy Bundle at number 19. Video game content spending, encompassing software and subscriptions, dropped 9% year-over-year to $4.5 billion, with console content experiencing the most significant decline at 29% compared to November 2023. Hardware spending remained flat at $927 million, driven by a 15% growth in PlayStation 5 sales, which offset the 29% decline in Xbox sales and 3% decline in Switch sales. The newly released PS5 Pro console accounted for 19% of all Sony units sold, with dollar sales exceeding those of the PS4 Pro launch in November 2016 by over 50%, although unit sales were 12% lower. Overall, 2.4 million consoles were sold in November 2024, representing a 4% increase from the same period in the previous year. Year-to-date, hardware sales have fallen behind, with 9.4 million units sold compared to 11.8 million in the previous year.