Football wins two months in a row as Madden sweeps August sales | Circana

Madden NFL 25 was the top-selling game in August, but it was not a particularly fruitful month for video game hardware, according to industry-tracking firm Circana. This is the second time in a row that a football title from Electronic Arts has topped the month’s bestseller charts — in July, it was EA Sports College Football 25. However, the numbers were not so good for other parts of the industry — namely, August’s hardware sales.

Despite an uptick in numbers for July — which were likely driven by the aforementioned College Football title — hardware sales in August are back down by a whopping 36% year-over-year. Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports, said in a statement, “All current generation console hardware platforms declined by at least 34% when compared to a year ago, with Switch showing the sharpest year-on-year fall (-41%).”

Piscatella added that spending on accessories is down. “Growth in the Remote Play Device segment (PlayStation Portal), was offset by a 10% year-on-year decline in Gamepad spending.” Overall spending for the year so far is up 1% YoY, but hardware sales in general continue their decline by 28% year-over-year. It remains to be seen if the PlayStation 5 Pro will juice up the aging console cycle.

Circana August 2024: Top 20 best-selling games in the U.S.

The fact that Madden has topped the charts for its release month is no surprise, as it’s the 25th consecutive year it’s done so. It’s also worth noting that the EA Sports MVP Bundle, which was the second-best-selling title of July, is a bundle that includes both EA Sports College Football 25 and Madden NFL 25. The latter also topped the platform-specific best-selling list for PlayStation and Xbox platforms, and was the 9th most-played game on PlayStation in August.

EA CEO Andrew Wilson said during the company’s recent Investor Day presentation that it aims to increase its audience to over 1 billion people worldwide by 2029, and EA Sports president Cam Webber said at the same event that Madden and the company’s other sports franchises offer a diverse group of experience for a growing audience of sports fans: “Hundreds of millions have joined our player network and our FC ecosystem already, and we’re meeting them with different experiences on different platforms, across geographies, across different business models, with Madden, NFL and college football.”

Several games made a resurgence to the best-seller list from further down — notably Elder Scrolls Online, which jumped up from 34th place to 12th. This is likely due to Square Enix offering a free-play event for the game in August to celebrate QuakeCon. Forza Horizon 5, which jumped from 29th place to 18th, had a major update in August; while Gran Turismo 7 also received a large patch in late July.

Where are the rest of August’s releases?

Surprisingly, Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws takes third place on August’s charts, despite the company itself admitting it sold far below expectations. The game itself appears to have been the catalyst for Ubisoft’s revision of its financial targets for the fiscal year, and the delay of Assassin’s Creed Shadows. That said, it sold better than most of August’s other releases (or at least those whose publishers supplied information to Circana).

The other two games on the list are Ouka Studios’ Visions of Mana and Gundam Breaker 4. The major release that didn’t make the list is Game Science’s Black Myth: Wukong, which Piscatella confirmed on Bluesky is because Circana doesn’t have digital sales data for the title. He also added that the game rated #12 for monthly active users on PS5 in August, and #15 on Steam for the same time period.

Circana August 2024: 20 best-selling games of 2024 so far

Once again, the new Madden game proves to be the most potent August launch, as it is the only one that’s made it on the year’s bestsellers-so-far. It’s perhaps a testament to the brand’s staying power that it’s only two places above its predecessor, Madden NFL 24. The rest of the list remains relatively unchanged since July.