Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III: Storms the sales charts of 2023 despite a lot of criticism

Wherever it says Call of Duty, that’s what sells. This old rule is also confirmed this year. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III pushes out even the biggest hits of the year in the charts… except for one.

My goodness, what a gaming year it has been. One hit followed the next and with titles like Baldur’s Gate III or Alan Wake 2, games have also been released that push the bar for their genres significantly higher. But other games are celebrating the biggest successes and Call of Duty, which has only been available for a short time, is displacing everything again anyway.

At least that’s what the sales charts for 2023 in the USA say, evaluated by Mat Piscatella, video game industry analyst and managing director at Circana (formerly NPD). By the way, the charts are based on sales valued in US dollars, not by unit numbers.

Accordingly, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III took second place in the annual charts after just a few weeks, despite all the criticism, especially of the campaign, and a certain “laziness” on the part of the developers, who essentially recycled a lot of the content.

There seems to be only one title that can’t be avoided this year. Towering over everything is Hogwarts Legacy, which was only a side note at the awards ceremonies, but took first place in the charts, at least in the survey period from January 1st to November 25th. By the way, the game is still selling well and secured third place in November, nine months after its release, although the Switch version, which was released late, is certainly not innocent of this.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was pushed by Call of Duty into third place in annual sales, followed by Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Madden NFL 24 and Diablo IV. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 even secured that position seventh place. Starfield, Bethesda’s new sci-fi epic, made it to number 10 in the USA.