Circana confirms Black Ops 6 is 2024’s biggest hit, but overall game spend in the US falls 9% YoY

Circana has published its December 2024 US recap, revealing Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 finished the year as the best-selling premium game of both the month and, indeed, the whole of 2024.

This makes Activision’s Call of Duty franchise the best-selling series for a record 16th consecutive year.

Roblox also “had a great December,” with consumer spend up 24% over November and spiking sharply on Christmas, clocking up nearly $12 million in US mobile consumer spend.

Although Christmas is “the biggest day of the year for Roblox every year,” Sensor Tower posits that this year’s Christmas was “especially huge,” bringing in 35% more US consumer spend this year than last.

Furthermore, according to Circana’s December report, 2024 projected US consumer spending on video game hardware, content, and accessories declined 8.9% to $7.5 billion compared to a year ago, with overall US consumer spend on the total video game market also falling 1.1% to $58.7 billion compared to $59.2 billion in 2023.

• Total video game sales* in December 2023: $8,282m
• Total video game sales* in December 2024: $7,543m (-9%)
• Total video game sales** for 2023: $59,294m
• Total video game sales** for 2024: $58,659m (-1%)

*projected to total market

**December 30 2023-January 4 2025

Player spend on games content and hardware is also down – 5% and 29%, respectively – whilst video game accessory spend remains flat year-over-year.

The analysis reports that a 21% drop in content spending on console when coupled with a 1% decline in mobile offsets the 13% growth elsewhere in PC, cloud, and non-console VR.

The huge drop in hardware spend year-on-year is most noticeable for Xbox and Nintendo, with both the Xbox Series and Switch declining by 38%, and Sony’s PS5 by 18%.

49% of PS5 and 43% of Xbox Series hardware sold in December did not include a physical disc drive, with the former cementing itself as the US’ third-biggest console in terms of lifetime sales, now trailing only Switch and Xbox 360.

PlayStation Portal was the best-selling accessory both in December 2024 and across the whole of last year, although the in terms of actual units sold, the PS5 DualSense controller tops both periods.

Whilst Black Ops 6 topped the annual chart, EA Sports College Football 25 took second place as the second best-selling game of 2024, although Marvel Rivals debuted at the top spot when it comes to monthly active users on Steam, and third across both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.

“Roblox retook the #2 spot on the top 10 games by US mobile consumer spend for the first time since August,” said Samuel Aune of Sensor Tower.

“Roblox had a great December, with consumer spend up 24% over November. Roblox revenue spiked sharply on Christmas, raking in nearly $12 million in US mobile consumer spend. Christmas is the biggest day of the year for Roblox every year, but this year’s Christmas was especially huge, bringing in 35% more US consumer spend than last year.

“Another game that saw impressive growth in the last month of 2024 was Call of Duty: Mobile, which grew US consumer spend by 20% with the beginning of Season 11: Winter War 2.”