PS5 Best-Selling Console in the US in March, Resident Evil 4 Remake Debuts in 1st - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 19 April 2023 / 7,952 Views
The PlayStation 5 was the best-selling console in the US in March 2023 in terms of units sold and dollar sales, according to figures from Circana (formerly The NPD Group). NPD includes the dates for the five week period of February 26 to April 1.
PlayStation 5 sales is once again the main reason for the growth in hardware sales. The PlayStation 5 is now tracking ahead of the PlayStation 4 in the US when you align launches. The PlayStation 5 also in March set a new individual PlayStation sales record beating the previous record set by the PSP with 620,000 units sold.
The Nintendo Switch was the second best-selling console in February in terms of units sold, while the Xbox Series X|S came in third place. In terms of dollar sales, the Xbox Series X|S was in second place, while the Nintendo was in third place.
Overall spending on video games in March was down five percent year-on-year from $4.88 billion to $4.63 billion. Spending on video game content decreased seven percent from $4.12 billion to $3.83 billion, while video game hardware sales jumped 10 percent from $516 million to $566.
Overall spending on video games in 2023 year-to-date is down one percent from $13.79 billion to $13.58 billion. Spending on video game content decreased four percent from $11.97 billion to $11.51 billion, while video game hardware sales is up 21 percent from $1.20 billion to $1.46 billion.
"Consumer spending on video game content, hardware and accessories totaled $4.6B, a 5% decline when compared to a year ago," said Circana Executive Director and Video Game Industry Analyst Mat Piscatella. "ear-to-date consumer spending fell 1% when compared to the same period in 2022, to $13.6B.
"PlayStation 5 lifted hardware spending in March. However this growth was offset by a decline in content spending, where increases in non-mobile subscription as well as digital add-on console content were offset by lower spend across premium games, PC add-on content and mobile."
Piscatella added, "Video game hardware spending increased 10% when compared to March 2022, reaching $566 million. This is the second highest video game hardware spend for a March month in U.S. history, trailing only the $680 million reached in March 2021.
"Growth in PlayStation 5 hardware spending once again drove the March hardware gains. PlayStation 5 was the best-selling hardware platform in units and dollars for both March as well as 2023 year-to-date.
PlayStation 5 hardware unit sales have now surpassed those of PlayStation 4 on a time-aligned basis (29 months in market)."
The remake of Resident Evil 4 debuted at the top of the software charts (ranked by dollar sales) and is the third best-selling game of 2023. Hogwarts Legacy was the second best-selling game of March and is the best-selling game of 2023.
There were two other new releases in the top 20. MLB: The Show 23 debuted in third place, while WWE 2K23 debuted in seventh place.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II dropped two spots to fourth place, The Last of Us Part I is up one spot to fifth place, and FIFA 23 is down one spot to sixth place.
Elden Ring is down one spot to eighth place and Madden NFL 23 fell from fourth to ninth place. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is up three spots to 10th place and Minecraft is up two spots to 11th place.
Here are the top 20 best-selling games in terms of dollars for March 2023:
Here are the top 20 best-selling games in 2023 year-to-date:
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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RE4 really boosting the sales numbers for PS5, FF16 will probably boost the sales even more, this will be the best year in the PS5 lifetime for sure.
Xbox being second in dollars again means Xbox and switch are probably close for the second month in a row. I wonder what the gap between those two and PlayStation is
The best selling YTD list is incredible.
MLB doing that work. Also No GTA 5 means 6 is finally coming! And... My goodness look at RE4 go! Very proud of Octopath Traveler!
The 5 % decline in software could mean that people only bought the PS5 console without any games or/and people bought less games on Nintendo Switch.
It's mostly due to releases. Last year there was Elden Ring Feb 25th, so it's 2nd week onwards was counted in March. Gran Turismo 7, Tiny Tina, GTA V for next-gen and Kirby Forgotten Land all launched in March 2022 too.
This year the only new title that was likely to sell a lot of copies was RE4. WWE and MLB the only other new games on the chart both had entries last year too so they're basically cancelled out.
