This beginning of the year could count on four main novelties, the most successful of which is none other than Dead Space, an acclaimed remake which, however, fails to knock Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 off the top step of the ranking. Note, however, that the Motive Studios game only had 48 hours to prove itself, this ranking ending on January 28. And then, Electronic Arts can boast of placing no less than five titles in the top 20, largely thanks to its sports games.
Rather OK for Fire Emblem, rather KO for Forspoken
The other best-performing release of the month is Fire Emblem Engage, which jumps into the top 5 without needing to take into account its download sales (the years pass, but Nintendo still does not communicate them). The NPD’s balance sheets being more and more scarce in information (to start the year, say goodbye to the top 10 by platform), we will unfortunately not know how what the start of this new opus is worth compared to that of Fire Emblem Three Houses.
While waiting to see what Square Enix will want to say about it in its next financial report, the case of Forspoken seems on the other hand understood, the new license not even managing to precede Elden Ring which is about to celebrate its first anniversary. And there, download sales are well accounted for. At least Frey still does better than One Piece Odyssey, which will settle for a clearly disappointing 9th place for an RPG that Bandai Namco announced as the most ambitious adaptation of the series.
Naughty Dog thanks HBO
In the second part of the ranking, The Last of Us Part I directly benefits from the popularity of the adaptation signed HBO and PlayStation Productions. Released last September, the Naughty Dog remake was 36th last December, here it is propelled to 11th place, well positioned between Pokémon and Sonic Frontiers. He is not the only one to come back from the depths of the ranking: thanks to its release on PlayStation and Xbox, Monster Hunter Rise jumped from 68th to 13th place. With now 12 million sales worldwide, the game stands out as the second biggest success in Capcom’s history after Monster Hunter World (18.6 million).
Console sales is the only stable category compared to January 2022 with revenue of $393 million. Much of the credit goes to the PlayStation 5, which had its best January ever, both in volume and in dollars. Alongside a Switch that is still in good shape (Nintendo’s console is doing better than in January 2022), the PS5 is compensating for the decline that has been going on for a few months now on the Xbox Series side. Finally, the decline in accessories (-14%) is mainly due to falling demand for controllers. In this area, it is once again the black DualSense which is doing well.
- Also Read | The results of the previous month
