It took Call of Duty to beat Goku
It seems pretty safe to say at this point that western fans were hungry for a worthy successor to Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 after 17 years and that Bandai Namco’s big marketing push really seems to have worked out.
Circana (formerly NPD Group) recently published their video game industry sales data for the month of October in the United States where Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero almost managed to come out on top in terms of best-sellers and managed to set another record.
According to the sales charts shared by Mat Piscatella, 8 of the top 10 best selling games in the U.S. last month were actually new releases, which may be the most we’ve seen all year in one go.
That includes Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero all the way up at number two for October as a big win for Bandai Namco.
This applied to both the PlayStation and Xbox top 10 sales charts too.
The only game that managed to beat out Goku and friends was unsurprisingly Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which there was probably no way DB was ever going to defeat in the U.S. alone even with Ultra Instinct.
October 2024 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content)
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— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 8:00 AM
Dragon Ball’s performance is impressive given the stacked month that included not only those two titles but also Silent Hill 2, Undisputed, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Super Mario Party Jamboree and Sonic X Shadow Generations.
The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection was featured in the last top 20 rankings for September, but it is not here for last month nor are any other fighting games.
Piscatella makes another very interesting note in regards to Sparking’s performance that puts it above the lifetime totals of Dragon Ball FighterZ, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, Kakarot and every other game featuring the Saiyans.
According to their data, Sparking Zero is now the best selling Dragon Ball game in the United States, and it reached that point after just a month.
Beyond that, DBSZ was also the third highest among Bandai Namco titles in the company’s history too behind only Elden Ring and Dark Souls 3.
After just one month in market, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero became the best-selling Dragon Ball game in U.S. lifetime dollar sales and ranked 3rd among all Bandai Namco Entertainment published titles in history, trailing only Elden Ring and Dark Souls III.
— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 8:00 AM
He does note, however, this sales record is from counting the lifetime dollar amount generated and not copies sold.
So that likely means FighterZ and Xenoverse 2 may have still sold more individual copies overall, but Bamco has made more money from Sparking Zero by way of more players picking up the game at launch (with a slightly higher price tag of $70 and more expensive deluxe versions).
Moreover, Sparking Zero already rocketed up to the number 4 position on the year to date sales chart for the U.S. too after its first month trailing only behind EA Sports College Football 25, Helldivers 2 and COD Black Ops 6.
Tekken 8 is still holding on to its ranking position as well, but these two new additions to the list have pushed it from 14th to 16th place — so it’ll be interesting to see if it can remain there after the last two months have passed for 2024.
Year-to-Date Ending October 2024 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games – U.S. (Dollar Sales, Physical and Digital from digital data sharing publishers, excludes add-on content)
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— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) November 22, 2024 at 8:00 AM
This all lines up pretty well with Bandai Namco’s recent reveal that around 90% of Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero’s sales have come from the Americas and Europe as opposed to Japan, the res of Asia and other regions.
The company also stated Dragon Ball had an outstanding launch after it sold 3 million copies in just one day though they haven’t provided an updated figure to that yet.
Dragon Ball FighterZ and Xenoverse 2 have both managed to cross over 10 million copies sold after their lifespans, so the new arena fighter still has some work to do to fully catch up to its predecessors.
On PC at least, Sparking Zero has seen its average playerbase drop over 90% now compared to the game’s record-breaking peak of over 120,000 concurrent Steam users, so it’ll be interesting to see what momentum the game continues to have going forward.
There is of course the current Season Pass with more DLC on the way as well as future updates, but will it be supported for over six years like FighterZ has?
We’ll also be extremely curious to see where Sparking places on the sales charts for November and December too though we’ll obviously have to wait to find out more about that data.
No matter how you slice it, though, Bamco is probably really happy with these results.