Circana’s Mat Piscatella has released video game market highlights for 2023, and WB Games’ Hogwarts Legacy ended up being the bestselling game of 2023, beating out the likes of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2.
“Hogwarts Legacy finished as 2023’s bestselling video game in the U.S. market in dollar sales. It is the first year since 2008 that a non-Call of Duty or Rockstar-developed title ranked 1st (Rock Band),” Piscatella explained on X. “Hogwarts Legacy was the bestselling game of the year on PlayStation platforms, ranked 2nd on Xbox platforms, and placed 5th on Nintendo platforms.”
That’s an impressive feat for the Harry Potter prequel game, which proved quite controversial upon its release earlier in 2023 due to the transphobic views of series author J.K. Rowling. Piscatella also pointed out that “Call of Duty was the bestselling franchise in U.S. full game dollar sales for a record 15th consecutive year.” That’s a record that’ll be much harder for another series to break anytime soon.
Overall, Piscatella revealed that “video game content spending ended 2023 1% higher than 2022, driven by a 13% increase in digital premium download (full game) spending on console platforms.” The full top 20 bestselling games list is as follows:
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.