March was a good month for new games, as a number of fresh releases walked straight into the USA software charts. As per Circana (formerly NPD) analyst Mat Piscatella, it was Dragon's Dogma 2 that caught fire in March, claiming the crown as the month's best-selling title. The action RPG sequel is also the third best-selling game of the year, which is quite impressive.
Fellow newcomers Rise of the Ronin and Unicorn Overlord did decently as well, ending up in fifth and eighth respectively. Annual baseball hit MLB: The Show 24 rocked up in third, and WWE 2K24 took the ninth spot — although the latter's digital sales aren't included. As such, it's fair to assume that the latest wrestling sim sold especially well.
But the real winner here has to be Helldivers 2. Despite releasing in early February, the bug-blasting shooter managed to stick around in second place throughout March — which is massive, considering the aforementioned competition. The Sony-published title remains the best-selling game of 2024 so far.
Meanwhile, on the hardware side of things, the PS5 was once again the market leader, both in terms of unit and dollar sales. However, overall spending is down for the quarter, compared to last year.
USA Software Sales Top 20: March 2024
- Dragon's Dogma 2
- Helldivers 2
- MLB: The Show 24^
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
- Rise of the Ronin
- Princess Peach: Showtime!*
- Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
- Unicorn Overlord
- WWE 2K24*
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Madden NFL 24
- EA Sports FC 24
- Minecraft
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Tekken 8
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Elden Ring
- Mario Kart 8*
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2
- Mortal Kombat 1
* Digital sales not included
^ Digital sales on Xbox and Nintendo Switch not included
[source twitter.com]
Comments 21
That's really very cool to see DD2 at the top of the tree. Also, Helldivers 2's success has been one of the best things to come out of gaming this year.
Awesome to see Dragon's Dogma 2 and Helldivers 2 (still!) at the top.
Seeing as DD2 was relatively low budget and from a smaller team, I hope Capcom has a bit more faith in the franchise now and we can have a huge expansion equivalent to or even bigger than Dark Arisen 😁
Also happy to see Unicorn Overlord in there. I still haven't played much of it but what I did play was pretty unique (in a good way )
Disappointed that games I've bought this year aren't on the list. I just got scarlet nexus and persona 3 remake on sale a few days ago. And today I got tales of Arise. And I got like a dragon infinite wealth on launch. All great games. Just don't understand why they're never on these charts.
@CutchuSlow because they were all out well over a year ago. Can't expect those pretty niche titles to be high in current sales charts !
Edit ! Apart from Infinite Wealth...but again, pretty niche JRPG
@CutchuSlow Niche games that's why.
Helldivers 2 so great, if anyone who hasn't played it, it's highly recommended. I don't play multiplayer games often but this really has hooked me. I'm 100 hours in and already platinum it and still can't stop playing.
Happy to see Dragons Dogma 2 and Rebirth both in the top 10! My two favourite games this year so far.
Glorious democracy!! Also, very happy to see Unicorn Overlord in the top 10!
Like 5 Sony exclusives in the top 20. Man HD2 is just a beast. What a great game. Side note...Dave the Diver has stopped my Rebirth progression in its tracks. Really special game if you haven't tried it.
Helldivers 2 is “ the seventh highest ranked Sony published title in the US in terms of lifetime US dollar sales after just two months”
Only 6 Sony published games have grossed more revenue over their entire lifetime than Helldivers 2’s first 2 months! What in the world? This doesn’t even include microtransactions(does include super citizen edition presumably though).
50+ hrs in helldivers and yes a multiplayer cinematic experience..
Are there numbers and numbers by platform to go with this? I know at one point over 70% of hd2 sales were on PC. It's a bit of a mess where some games include digital sales, some don't, hard to make use of it where we don't know if the top 5 and bottom 5 are separated to a thousand units or 10m units. Mk8 not including digital surely put it far too low in the list..... Lol.
Glad to see two games at the top that are definitely more niche than would be typically in these lists. Both of them are overrated games to me (both are 7.5ish/10 for me… Rebirth, Prince of Persia, Tekken, and Balatro have been the only games that have truly hit for me this year so far), but I’m really glad to see people trying out new things and expanding IPs that many said would fail. It gives me hope in the future of our industry. The signs are all there that the industry will have success if it listens to the gamers. Also happy to see Skull and Bones and Suicide Squad vacant from the list. Hope the industry heads realize what we do want and starts to learn and avoid the practices we despise.
@NEStalgia I don’t recall any territory where helldivers was 70% on PC.
The first 1M sales were roughly even across both platforms as per Arrowhead CEO.
The first month UK sales were 58% on PS5 if I remember correctly and euro wide sale was slightly higher on Pc, somewhere in the high 50’s.
Such a shame we no longer get actual er… sales numbers these days with the sales numbers!
Helldivers 2 has just started dudes. It is yet going to grow. We are yet to see vehicles added.
Then, there will be weapons, armours, helmets and vehicles customization/skill tree, so... the game will be totally different than that we started playing two months ago.
I am playing nothing else since it came out, but I have a great gang to dive with and we met some far out dudes in public matches so our circle of friends to play it with has grown.
GOTY material 💯
Crazy to me to see Hogwarts Legacy still doing what it’s doing after being out for so long. I guess Switch release wasn’t too far back though.
I would use "The Sony IP" instead of "The Sony-published".
It's shorter, it's correct and it educates new fans.
Impressive numbers for unicorn overlord given it's completely silly name.
@KingPev persona 3 came out in February.
No surprises here, DD2 stays true to itself and gives fans more of what they want, Capcom know how to treat their loyal fans
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