The month of October tends to be one of the biggest months of the year for gaming as a slew of games release. 2024 was no different, and neither was the game that topped the charts in the US with Call Of Duty Black Ops 6 claiming top spot.

With today's data from Circana we get to take a peek behind the curtain to get an idea of what games are doing well. An astounding 9 of the top 20 games in October were new releases including the top 7 releases led by the aforementioned Call Of Duty Black Ops 6.

A few things to consider when reading the above chart. Nintendo doesn't include digital sales so Super Mario Party Jamboree may have a lot of unaccounted sales. Also Dragon Age: The Veilguard being 6th is impressive considering this only captures 3 days of sales for the game.

Of course everyone had eyes on Call Of Duty's performance this month as it was the first Call Of Duty to ever release day one on Xbox Game Pass. How would that affect sales? Well according to Circana's Mat Piscatella not that much.

"Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 to Game Pass did a few things in the US... it resulted in a subscription spending boost, shifted share of full game sales to PlayStation, did not appear to result in massive cannibalization of sales, and did not appear to provide a significant boost to Xbox Series hardware."

To that effect, 82% of Black Ops 6 console sales in the US were on PlayStation. Despite the sales splits subscription service spending grew 16% year over year, primarily from Game Pass growth. Considering Black Ops 6 overall sales were 23% better than last years Modern Warfare 3 I think these numbers will likely be a win across the board for Xbox. The game sold better and it significantly boosted Game Pass.

Over on the yearly chart, Black Ops 6 has already landed in 3rd place behind only College Football 25 and Helldivers 2. It will be interesting to see if it will catch those games and become the first ever day 1 Game Pass release to be the best selling game of the year.

Perhaps just as significant is the fact that Dragon Ball Z: Sparking Zero is the 4th best selling game of the year after a month of sales. This is significant for Bandai Namco as it already makes it the third best selling game in publisher history behind only Elden Ring and Dark Souls III.

Hardware Continues To Plummet

One thing Black Ops 6 wasn't able to do was help lagging hardware sales as all 3 companies see a decline year over year. Overall sales dropped 23% with the Switch falling 38%, PlayStation 5 20% and Xbox Series falling 18%. The PlayStation 5 was once again the best selling console with Xbox finishing in second.

All this data combined shows that while Black Ops 6 significantly boosted Xbox Game Pass, it didn't bring many new players to the console itself. We will see what happens in November with Black Friday sales as well as the PlayStation 5 Pro releasing to see if console sales can get a boost.