Bethesda Softworks and Microsoft's space-based RPG Starfield was the best-selling video game in the US during the month of September 2023, according to numbers posted on X (formerly Twitter) by Mat Piscatella of the research firm Circana (formerly known as the NPD Group).
September 2023 Top 20 Best-Selling Premium Games (Dollar Sales, Excludes add-on content) pic.twitter.com/rNhAH8d8xY
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) October 18, 2023
Mortal Kombat 1 came in second place on the September 2023 list, followed by EA Sports FC 24 in third place. The first-person crime shooter Payday 3 came in fifth place, while Ubisoft's arcade driving game The Crew: Motorfest was in seventh place on the list.
In a follow-up X post, Piscatella stated that Starfield is now the 8th best-selling game of 2023 so far, and was the lead in both Xbox and PC games, with the PC version selling the most. Hogwarts Legacy remains the best-selling video game of 2023 at the moment.
Total video game sales, which include hardware, software, and accessories, came in at $4.495 billion in September, up 10 percent compared to September 2023, according to Circana.
In terms of hardware, overall sales were down 8 percent in September. There were single-digit gains for Xbox hardware during the month, but they were offset by lower sales of PlayStation and Switch hardware. Having said that, Sony's PlayStation 5 was the top-selling console in terms of both units and dollars, followed by Microsoft's Xbox Series consoles.
When asked on X how Microsoft's Xbox revenue in September 2023 compared to other Septembers in past years, Piscatella replied, "
For a Sep... Sep 2023 Xbox ecosystem units highest since Sep 2016, dollars highest since Sep 2014. Sep.
Obviously, the launch of Starfield did indeed help the overall Xbox ecosystem have one of their best Septembers in years in terms of consoles and dollars.