NPD Corporation has released its analysis of game sales in the United States for December and for the full year 2022, and while the full-year results aren’t shocking, December in particular had some interesting news in it. A slight drop in game sales charts shed light on the performance of two allegedly “underperforming” games recently: Callisto Protocol and Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope.
First, the Callisto Protocol. It debuted in December at number 17 on the US grossing chart (ranked by revenue in dollars), peaked at number 10 on the PlayStation chart, and did not break into the top 10 at all. Xbox. Obviously, that’s not bad in itself: Callisto is, after all, a brand new IP of a brand new studio. It will never beat giants like Elden Ring or Call of Duty.
But somewhat surprisingly, it doesn’t outperform some of its competitors. For instance, it was beaten by the nearly nine-year-old Mario Kart 8 and only on one major platform (which admittedly has some recent DLC that has the potential to boost sales), Minecraft is even old more and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate – another exclusive console with no significant updates in December.
And it is worth noting that reports have pointed to the Callisto Protocol failed to meet the company’s sales expectations after being billed as “A quadruple-A” game and having a huge budget. With that in mind, a cross-platform game that essentially had a full month’s revenue included in the launch report at number 17 isn’t great news.
It’s Callisto Protocol, but what’s going on with Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope? Just last week, Ubisoft announced in a press release that Sparks of Hope “ineffective“, claiming that this is one of the many motives behind the remastered business strategy that includes restructuring, game cancellations, and delays. Sparks of Hope released in October of this year, debuted at #6 on NPD in the month of debut and dropped to 13th in November and 14th in December.
While we don’t have actual sales figures on hand, that seems solid enough, especially when you consider it’s a Switch exclusive and Nintendo doesn’t share digital sales figures, which means it can actually do even better.
So what does “underperforming” really mean? We can’t tell what Ubisoft’s expectations are for it, but it’s interesting to compare its rankings at least with its predecessor Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle. Kingdom Battle launched in late August 2017, but was not included in the August charts due to not landing during that month’s reporting period. But it debuted at number 5 during the September 2017 launch, arguably had much less stiff competition (Destiny 2 was the best-selling game that month, and that year’s Call of Duty, for example, hasn’t come out yet).
Then it mysteriously disappeared from the top 20 for the rest of the year. It didn’t break the charts in the US in October, Novemberor December that year. We must take this lightly, of course – rankings do not equate to any particular dollar sales figure, and all of this can be explained by the particularly stiff competition in a business. certain month, different priced games or any quantity. other strange things.
But it’s interesting to see Sparks of Hope perform relatively well against its competition even months after launch (it also beat Callisto Protocol in December and was the third best-selling Switch title last month). !), while its developer and publisher insist it’s still not enough.
Overall, US spending on games hit $7.6 billion in December, up 2% year over year. Hardware grew 16% with PS5 being the best-selling console of the month in dollar sales and Nintendo Switch being the best-selling console by units. Meanwhile, spending on content and accessories fell very slightly. Specifically, content was impacted by a decrease in spending on mobile, subscriptions, and physical software even as digital spending increased.
For the full year of 2022, total spending on video games fell 5% to $56.6 billion, with increases in hardware and subscription spending making up for declines elsewhere. NPD Group analyst Mat Piscatella cited “continued limited supply of console hardware, relatively few new high-end releases, and macroeconomic conditions” as factors affecting sales of the year.
The PS5 was the best-selling console of the year in terms of sales in dollars, and the Switch was the best-selling in terms of unit sales. The best-selling game of the year (unsurprisingly) was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, followed by Elden Ring.
Here are the December 2022 best-selling games in dollar terms:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
- god of war Ragnarok
- NFL Frenzy 23
- fifa 23
- sound border
- Elen’s ring
- Need for Speed: No strings attached
- mario kart 8
- Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII: Reunion
- NBA 2K23
- Just Dance Version 2023
- Mario + Rabbids: Rays of Hope
- Minecraft
- Super Smash Bros. Final
- Nintendo Switch Sports
- Callisto . protocol
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Splatoon 3
- Knight of Gotham
And here are the best-selling games of the whole year:
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II
- Elen’s ring
- NFL Frenzy 23
- God of War: Ragnarok
- LEGO Star Wars: Skywalker Saga
- Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
- fifa 23
- Legendary Pokemon: Arceus
- Horizon II: Forbidden West
- MLB: Program 22
- mario kart 8
- Call of duty: Pioneer
- Gran Turismo 7
- Kirby and the Forgotten Land
- NBA 2K23
- sound border
- Knight of Gotham
- Minecraft
- Nintendo Switch Sports
- Super Smash Bros. Final
Note that for both charts, Nintendo and Take-Two do not share digital sales data, and therefore, digital sales data for their published games is not included. .
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
