Update 23/04/2026, Author’s Note: This article has been updated to more specifically identify where digital sales numbers were and were not included.
Original Story:
Circana executive director and video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella has reported the US sales charts for the month of March 2026, and perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s MLB The Show 26 that appears at the top of the charts, helping to drive a 12% spending growth compared to March 2025 alongside Crimson Desert and Pokémon Pokopia.
While Piscatella cites Crimson Desert as one of the main spending growth drivers, when looking at the full top-20 list of best-selling games by dollar sales, including both physical and digital sales, the new open-world from Pearl Abyss failed to make the top 10. It landed in the number 15 spot, beating out Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which jumped from 165th place the previous month into 16th place thanks to its arrival on PC.
The games that did make the top 10, however, include the aforementioned Pokémon Pokopia, which landed in fifth place on the charts, and just ahead of it was Bungie’s new extraction shooter, Marathon, landing in fourth place. Second place (with first taken by MLB The Show 26) went to Resident Evil Requiem, and third place went to WWE 2K26.
It’s worth remembering that these charts are based on dollar sales, not units sold, and certain titles, like Crimson Desert, did not share digital sales numbers. Piscatella notes that Crimson Desert, MLB The Show 26, and Pokémon Pokopia “led all titles in total projected full game spending,” but at least for Crimson Desert, its physical US dollar sales were not enough to get it a place in the top 10. It makes Marathon’s inclusion in fourth place all the more impressive, considering that Marathon is a $40 USD game at its regular price, while Crimson Desert retails for $70 USD at full price.
As for how the monthly charts shook up the list of best-selling games in the US for 2026 so far, MLB The Show 26, WWE 2K26, Marathon, Pokémon Pokopia, and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection all made the cut to join the top-20 best-selling titles in the US so far. Crimson Desert, however, did not.
MLB went the highest, now ranked as the second best-selling game in the US for the year so far, with Resident Evil Requiem still in the lead. WWE 2K26 lands just behind MLB in third, while Marathon lands in sixth place for the best-selling games on the year in the US so far. Pokopia just missed the top-10 by landing in 12th place, and Monster Hunter Stories 3 landed at 15th place.
If you’re wondering how it’s possible that Crimson Desert misses the top 10 best-selling games for the month by dollar sales and entirely misses the best-selling games list of 2026 while it has at least 5 million copies sold, and Marathon, which made both lists, only has an estimated 1.2 million copies sold, the answer likely lies in the fact that these are all US-only numbers, and that Pearl Abyss did not share Crimson Desert’s digital sales.
Both those factors play a part in how the charts shook out, and from what we’ve seen reported on Marathon’s sales and reports on Crimson Desert’s, it’s likely that Crimson Desert is just more of a global success, while most of Marathon’s audience is concentrated in a few regions, the US included.
This is further exemplified when looking at individual platform charts, where Marathon ranks on the March 2026 sales charts for PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, while Crimson Desert appeared only on the chart for best-selling PlayStation games, and it was below Marathon.
Moving to hardware, it was a Nintendo Switch 2 month all the way, with the Switch 2 finishing as the best-selling piece of hardware for the month and driving 69% spending growth in terms of hardware spending compared to March 2025. The PlayStation 5 was the second-best-selling console for the month, with PS5 spending going up 3% compared to March 2025.
As we get closer to the Switch 2’s one-year anniversary, when checking in on its first 10 months on shelves compared to the Switch 1 in the US, Piscatella reports that unit sales of the Switch 2 are “12% higher” than the Switch 1 over the same time period.
Overall, March was clearly a strong month for the US video game industry in terms of how much people were spending, with everything from software, hardware, and accessory spending all increasing compared to March 2025. It’ll be interesting to see how much longer Resident Evil Requiem can hold its top spot for the best-selling game of the year in the US so far, and if Capcom will go two consecutive years with one of its games at least in the top five after Monster Hunter Wilds‘ finish last year.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech’s gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry’s movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he’s done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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