Today, Circana released the Video Game Market Highlight reports for 2025 so far, detailing a number of interesting trends based on sales for the year-to-date. According to a breakdown from Mat Piscatella, despite having only been released on February 28, 2025, Monster Hunter: Wilds not only came out as the best-selling game of last month but also topped the list of the best 20 best-selling premium games for the entire year so far.
The latest release in the Capcom franchise managed to more than double the total of the previous installment, Monster Hunter: Rise, achieved during its 2021 debut. Monster Hunter: Wilds is followed by Kingdom Come: Deliverance II in the second spot, Civilization VII in the third, and PGA Tour 2K25 rounding out the first four games. Each top-four title was a brand-new release, with the fifth spot going to NBA 2K25, which came out in September 2024.
Take-Two Interactive continues to flex its muscles as one of the top publishers around, with three of those five spots (Civilization VII, PGA Tour 2K25, and NBA 2K25) belonging to one of their games.
Xbox and PlayStation charts were much of the same, with the key difference being that Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 jumps to the third spot for the Sony console. The Nintendo Switch continues to be dominated by Mario Kart 8 in 2025, with Super Mario Jamboree and Donkey Kong Country Returns following up right behind it.
Fortnite also continues its dominance in 2025, retaining the title of the most-played PlayStation game, though it did get beat out by Call of Duty HQ – which combines activity from Call of Duty Warzone 2.0, MW II, MW III, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 – for Xbox users. Marvel Rivals holds its top spot of perennial Steam champion Counter-Strike 2, with Monster Hunter: Wilds coming in a close third for PC players.
PlayStation 5 was also crowned the best-selling hardware platform, though spending on video game hardware is down by 25% compared to last year, at $256 million. Spending so far as a whole is actually 11% lower than year-to-date last year, at $9.0 billion.
