January 2025 was a notably quiet month for the video game industry, with only a single new release making it into the top 20 best-selling games. The predictable dominance of Call of Duty continued, but the real story of the month was the resurgence of Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth.
Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth, which debuted in February 2024 at No.2 on Circana's charts, saw its ranking slip to No.7 the following month and end the year at No.17. Despite these respectable figures, Square Enix expressed disappointment with the game's sales, hinting that it fell short of their expectations. This was particularly notable given that Rebirth was initially a PS5 exclusive, a factor that can hinder sales compared to multi-platform releases.
However, in January 2025, Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth broke free from its exclusivity and launched on Steam, catapulting its ranking to No.3 from a dismal No.56 in December. The Final Fantasy 7: Remake & Rebirth Twin Pack also saw a dramatic rise, moving from No.265 to No.16. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlighted the "fantastic" Steam launch, noting that Rebirth was the best-selling game of the week ending January 25th in the U.S. market based on dollar sales, with the Twin Pack ranking third.
This success on Steam, likely mirrored in international markets, suggests that a multi-platform approach could influence Square Enix's strategy for future Final Fantasy releases. Piscatella emphasized the consumer response to the PC launch, suggesting that releasing on PC is increasingly beneficial regardless of genre or historical release strategies. He also noted the growing difficulty for third-party publishers to justify platform exclusivity without substantial incentives from platform holders.
We'll need to wait until Square Enix's next earnings call in May to see how this impacts their future plans.
As for the rest of January's charts, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Madden NFL 25 continued to dominate, with the new release Donkey Kong Country: Returns on Nintendo Switch making it to No.8, driven solely by physical sales. It Takes Two re-entered the top 20 at No.20, buoyed by steady sales and promotional efforts ahead of Hazelight Studios' upcoming game, Split Fiction, set to release in March.
Overall, January 2025 saw a decline in gaming spending compared to the previous year. The tracking period for January 2025 was four weeks, compared to five weeks in 2024, leading to a 15% drop in overall spending to $4.5 billion. Content spending was down 12%, with console content plummeting 35%. Hardware spending saw a 45% decrease year-over-year, with PS5 down 38%, Xbox Series down 50%, and Switch down 53%. Despite these declines, PS5 remained the best-selling hardware in both dollars and units, followed by Xbox Series in hardware spending and Switch in unit sales.
The top 20 best-selling games in the U.S. for January 2025, based on dollar sales, were as follows:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
- Madden NFL 25
- Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth
- EA Sports FC 25
- Minecraft*
- Marvel's Spider-Man 2
- EA Sports College Football 25
- Donkey Kong Country Returns*
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Sonic Generations
- Helldivers II
- Astro Bot
- Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero
- Super Mario Party Jamboree*
- Elden Ring
- Final Fantasy VII Remake & Rebirth Twin Pack
- Mario Kart 8*
- The Crew: Motorfest
- UFC 5
- It Takes Two*
*Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana's data. Some publishers, including Nintendo and Take-Two, do not share certain digital data for this report.
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