Street Fighter 6 still in the top rankings for all of 2023
Unsurprisingly, Mortal Kombat 1 appears to be performing quite well in North America at least, but just how many people are picking it up?
The NPD Group / Circana recently released its October 2023 video game sales charts for the United States that shows MK1 still ranking fairly high though seemingly behind where its predecessor was at the same time.
In terms of dollar sales for the past month across all platforms, Mortal Kombat 1 ended up ranking 6th overall, which was down from its 2nd place finish for September.
It was pushed down by the releases of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros. Wonder and Assassin’s Creed: Mirage, which all made up the top 3 for October, though the fighting game did still beat out other launches like UFC 5, Forza Motorsport, Sonic Superstars and the Metal Gear Solid: Master Collection Vol. 1.
October 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/43R6nBuag6
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 15, 2023
In terms of monthly active users, Mortal Kombat remained steadily at 7th for PlayStation 5, 19th on Xbox Series X|S, and failed to place in the top 20 for Steam — there’s also no data from Nintendo to determine Switch numbers.
For the entire year of 2023 thus far, Mortal Kombat 1 is the 8th-best selling game in the U.S. now beating out the likes of Starfield and the Resident Evil 4 remake.
YTD ending October 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/gp1BpSccpa
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 15, 2023
If we look back to 2019, however, Mortal Kombat 11 topped the NPD charts for multiple months in a row and was even the best selling video game in the U.S. for a time as well.
Mortal Kombat 11 finished out 2019 as the 5th-best selling game in the country though it also had five more months on the market compared to Mortal Kombat 1.
While it is interesting to see the difference, it’s also not a perfect comparison considering MK11 released earlier in the year in April and faced less stiff competition for a while considering its biggest rivals at the time were Kingdom Hearts 3, Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 and Anthem.
October 2023 Top 20 Titles Played on Xbox Series Ranked by U.S. Monthly Active Users (Source: Circana Player Engagement Tracker) pic.twitter.com/fO66Mnlu7T
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 15, 2023
Warner Bros. revealed earlier this month that Mortal Kombat 1 had reached ‘almost 3 million copies sold’ and is still pretty darn impressive for just over a month for a new fighting game.
October also marks the second month in a row that Street Fighter 6 has failed to make the top 20 in sales in the U.S., but it is still the 15th best selling game of the year here (down from 13th last month).
Despite its strong start, Mortal Kombat 1 has faced continued criticism for the game’s monetization practices and glitches, so it’ll be interesting to see if this momentum can steam ahead through the holiday season or if things will start to drop off.