New data reveals that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III is already the second-best selling video game of 2023, despite awful reviews, a low Metacritic score, and complaints that its campaign was too short.
Before you get too comfortable, pop quiz! What’s the best-selling video game of 2023? If you said Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III, you are wrong. I just explained that it was only the second-best selling video game this year. Come on, pay attention. Anyway, 2023’s bestseller is still Hogwarts Legacy. But right behind it is this year’s CoD, pushing Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom down to third.
On December 13, Mat Piscatella—video game industry analyst and executive director at Circana (formerly NPD)—tweeted some interesting stats about video game hardware and software sales in 2023. Included in the stats was the reveal of the top-selling video games as of November 25, 2023. And even though the new MWIII was only available to purchase for two weeks in the currently provided data, it still shot all the way up the bestsellers list, landing right behind Hogwarts Legacy. As you’d expect, it was the top-selling game in November.
This marks the fifth year in a row that Call of Duty has been the bestselling game in November. The last time another game knocked CoD aside was when Rockstar launched Red Dead Redemption II in 2018. While it’s not surprising that a Call of Duty game is selling millions of copies quickly this year, I was curious if Activision’s yearly war machine would stumble. Reviews for MWIII were poor, fan reaction was mixed, and the campaign was a (thankfully) short mess that even got dunked on at The Game Awards.
In the end, none of that mattered. The Call of Duty brand is still strong enough to withstand bad reviews and angry fans, which isn’t shocking. This is a series that has grown beyond needing gamer and media support. It’s fully mainstream now. I’d reckon a large chunk of the people who buy Call of Duty at this point don’t really buy many other games, don’t care about press events, never check Metacritic, and don’t visit websites like Kotaku. They just know that every November they can count on a new Call of Duty game and they pick up a copy when visiting Walmart or Target.
I’m also not judging these people or suggesting they are idiots or anything like that. In fact, the idea of just playing one or two games you like a year and ignoring all the other bullshit connected to this medium sounds amazing. If anything, I’m jealous of these people and their lives.
And if they have fun with it for a few months before dropping it and playing nothing else until next year’s CoD, well, at least someone had a good time.
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