With 1.1 million copies sold, the latter marks the second best-selling sale of the year in front of the company (973,000 sales, digital format excluded). The first place goes to the indetro-free football game Fifa, renamed this year EA Sports FC24. However, its 1.4 million sales remain lower than in the previous opus (1.7 million in 2022 for FIFA 23). «“Fifa 23 had benefited from the World Cup effect, so it is difficult to gauge the effect of the name change,” said Rebours.
But the high-level scores of the first class obscure «“many disappointments” in the rest of the rankings, blowing a player in the industry. The fault of overproduction (711 console novelties, 18% more than in 2022), but perhaps also in budgetary trade-offs in times of crisis of purchasing power. On consoles, spending on microtransactions (largely the purchase of virtual currency on online games such as Fortnite) fell sharply by 16% (EUR 234 million). The French also made drastic cuts (-46%) in their PlayStation Plus, Xbox Game Pass or Nintendo Online subscriptions.
The Sell therefore remains extremely cautious in its prospects for 2024. “We expect market normalization, after these exceptional results, which are partly a correction” of the PlayStation 5 shortages anomaly,” says James Rebours. As usual, the lobby does not provide figures for the current year. In the United States, Circana is no longer dissatisdoes. According to its most optimistic scenario, the US market will decrease by 2% in 2024. But the fall could exceed 10%.
