The latest instalment in the “Call of Duty” first-person-shooter series topped American video game sales in 2024, figures released Thursday showed, with the overall market slightly smaller year-on-year.
Video games raked in a total of $58.7 billion last year, the research firm Circana said, down 1.1 percent on the previous year.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” from Microsoft-owned Activision plunges players into a guns-blazing alternate timeline for the aftermath of the Cold War.
The US top seller in 2023 had been “Hogwarts Legacy”, an adventure game set in the universe of “Harry Potter”.
Circana’s figures did not include gamers who accessed titles through Microsoft’s Xbox Game Pass subscription service.
“Black Ops 6” was available through Game Pass from the day of its release, in a first for the “Call of Duty” series.
Second-placed American football title “College Football 25” from Electronic Arts moved enough copies to become the top-selling sports game of all time in the United States.
Sales of games and online content grew two percent over the year, but there was a 25 percent slump in hardware sales, with several years since any major new console releases.
The only notable arrival in 2024 was the upgraded “Pro” version of Sony’s flagship Playstation 5.
The PS5 remained the top-selling console in the US, followed by Nintendo’s Switch.
Japan-based Nintendo announced last week that its follow-up, the hotly anticipated Switch 2, would arrive sometime this year.
Spending on mobile games totalled almost $25.5 billion on the US market in 2024, up nine percent year-on-year, according to a report from analysis firm Sensor Tower.
