2023 may have come and gone already, but it served as an important year for the fighting game community with the arrival of two new flagship titles as well as continued support for a bunch more.
Circana / the NPD Group recently released their video game sales rankings for December 2023 as well as the full year where both Mortal Kombat 1 and Street Fighter 6 made the cut against some stiff competition.
Closing out the year that was, MK1 stayed consistent in its sales in the United States from November to December sitting at 8th place overall in terms of money made.
December 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from DLP members, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/1jxBjMs5LL
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 18, 2024
What’s more is Mortal Kombat remained on the PlayStation 5 list of top monthly users at 11th down a few spots from November, but it did not chart there for Xbox or Steam apparently.
December 2023 Top 20 Titles Played on PlayStation 5 Ranked by U.S. Monthly Active Users (Source: Circana Player Engagement Tracker) pic.twitter.com/1iOMmcBxd8
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 18, 2024
Street Fighter 6 did not feature in the monthly positions, but that’s not that surprising since it hadn’t charted since August though it does show up a lot more in the yearly totals.
When zooming out over the past 12 months, Mortal Kombat 1 actually finished the year in 8th place here too beating out the likes of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, EA Sports FC 24, Starfield and Super Mario Bros. Wonder (though the latter doesn’t include digital sales) and was ranked just below Diablo 4 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
2023 Year Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from DLP members, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/LR6Za5YQ24
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 18, 2024
Street Fighter 6 closed out the year behind Final Fantasy 16 and Dead Island 2, and though it was technically the last game on that list that actually came out last year, this is still a pretty impressive feat for Capcom — especially combined with Resident Evil 4 also finishing 2023 at 13th in the U.S.
Breaking it down further to the platforms, MK1 had the 7th best showing on PlayStation systems for the whole year while SF6 ended up at 15th.
2023 Year Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games on PlayStation Platforms – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from DLP members, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/VKENys25VX
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 18, 2024
Interestingly, MK1 charted at 8th on Xbox while SF6 didn’t make the cut at all though Mortal Kombat doesn’t show up on the Nintendo Charts at all either.
You know what does though? Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 7th for the Switch. It may have finally fallen off the main NPD charts last year after almost 5 consecutive years, but that doesn’t mean it’s done completely.
2023 Year Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games on Nintendo Platforms – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from DLP members, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/U02lhTaXOi
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 18, 2024
Since this is just counting the United States, we can’t get a full sense of what these numbers actually looked like though Capcom did just recently announce that SF6 crossed 3 million sales after reaching 2 million after its first month.
The last we heard, Mortal Kombat 1 had also sold around 3 million units in less than a month, and that was before Black Friday and the holiday sales — so that number may well be at least 5 or 6 million now though Warner Bros. hasn’t updated the public on that yet.
Overall, it appears as though the flagship fighters of 2023 both performed quite well for themselves, but it’s going to be very interesting to see if that continues into 2024, especially with Tekken 8 and more big titles on the horizon in general.