Portkey Games knocked it out of the park with Hogwarts Legacy, and although the game was swamped with controversy at launch, it clearly couldn’t make a dent in its popularity. Hogwarts Legacy was the best-selling game in 2023, leaving all the biggest titles of the year in the dust. The total sales of Hogwarts Legacy crossed 12 million copies within the first two weeks, the report from Circana confirmed, a feat not many have been able to achieve.
Not only were the marketing efforts for Hogwarts Legacy fairly lacking compared to other big releases of the year, it was unceremoniously excluded from the biggest award shows. And having clearly been one of the best releases of the year, this was beyond unfair to the developers over at Portkey Games. And even under those horrible odds, it performed remarkably well.
Hogwarts Legacy Total Sales Make It The Best Selling Game of 2023
The most praised games like Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and Starfield couldn’t even come close to the Harry Potter-inspired world of Hogwarts Legacy. This is the first time since 2008 that a non-Call of Duty or non-Rockstar title has taken home the top spot. The last time this happened was with the original Rock Band.
The sales of Hogwarts Legacy topped the PlayStation charts, while it took second and fifth place on Xbox and Nintendo, respectively. It’s not a bad showing for a studio’s first game. The overall second spot was taken by Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, followed by Madden NFL 25, and the fourth place was taken by Insomniac’s spectacular web-slinging adventure, Spider-Man 2.
You can see the complete list of the top 20 best-selling games of 2023 below:
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
- Madden NFL 25
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Diablo 4
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Mortal Kombat 1
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
- EA Sports FC 24
- Starfield
- Super Mario Bros. Wonder
- Resident Evil 4
- MLB: The Show 23
- Dead Island 2
- Final Fantasy 16
- Street Fighter 6
- Elden Ring
- Mario Kart 8
- Minecraft
2023 was by far one of the best years for video games in ages. Regardless of your platform of preference, the top 20 are full of masterpieces we will be revisiting for a very long time.
