The fighting game community saw two huge juggernauts hit the stage this year between Street Fighter 6 and Mortal Kombat 1 with both making big splashes with players.
Circana / the NPD Group recently shared the video game industry sales data for the United States in November 2023 where Capcom and NetherRealm Studios are still sitting pretty with their numbers.
As far as the money made for last month went overall, Mortal Kombat 1 remained in the top 10 games in the states at 8th place.
This is down a couple spots from October since they got bumped down by the new arrivals of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the Super Mario RPG remake though it’s still quite impressive they’ve managed to stay consistently high over the first three months on the market.
With MK1 having sold around 3 million copies as of the start of November, there’s a good chance NRS has seen that number grow to 4 or 5 million by now with the discounts and holiday season though Warner Bros. hasn’t shared an update on that front.
November 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/sskPh7JoGh
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
It’s an arena fighter and not a full-fledged fighting game, but Naruto X Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections also showed that side of the genre can also still sell well coming it at 12th brand new for the month despite its mild critical reception.
Breaking things down further to the major platforms (minus Nintendo), Circana also shared their top 20 rankings for November based on monthly active users.
On PlayStation 5, MK1 impressively remained in 7th place for the second consecutive month though barely made the list at 19th for Xbox — and didn’t end up anywhere on the top Steam rankings.
November 2023 Top 20 Titles Played on PlayStation 5 Ranked by U.S. Monthly Active Users (Source: Circana Player Engagement Tracker) pic.twitter.com/sRGdfhD35w
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
Street Fighter 6, meanwhile, may not have cracked the top 20 monthly list since August, but it still seems to be having itself a good dang time too.
November 2023 Top 20 Titles Played on Xbox Series Ranked by U.S. Monthly Active Users (Source: Circana Player Engagement Tracker) pic.twitter.com/KvQ4izWPX4
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
Circana’s year to date sales for 2023 through November has SF6 as the 17th best selling game in the U.S., which is down from 15th in October after being bumped a few spaces by Final Fantasy 16 and Call of Duty.
Similarly to MK1, Black Friday and holiday sales for Street Fighter may well have sold another million or so copies past its previous 2.47 million mark, but we’ll have to wait until potentially the next quarterly report from Capcom to see the updated numbers.
YTD ending November 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/XKp7H0JStA
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) December 13, 2023
Mortal Kombat 1 moved down one spot from 8th to 9th place for the year to date sales as well, so they’re still riding pretty darn high too.
It’s also a bit surprising to note that this is going to be the first year since 2018 or 2019 that Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is not on the top seller list for the year, which is pretty darn nuts.
With Tekken 8 and more bigger, broader video games on the horizon, it’s going to be interesting to see how SF6 and MK1 will perform as we enter 2024 because it seems like they’re having a good 2023.