Assassin’s Creed Shadows sneaks to top of March sales | Circana

Image Credit: Ubisoft

Despite some controversy leading up to its release, Assassin’s Creed Shadows managed to rise to the top of March sales charts in the U.S., according to industry-tracking firm Circana. It was one of several releases that month to make it onto the charts, with Shadows also becoming the second-best-selling game of the year. However, sales in general are still as much in the red as they were last month, with hardware sales being down by 25% just as they were in February.

The US game hardware spending fell 25% when compared to a year ago, to $286 million. This is the lowest March hardware spending total since 2019 ($279M),” said Mat Piscatella, Circana’s executive producer for games reports. “Digital only SKUs have accounted for 75% of Xbox Series and 50% of PlayStation 5 hardware units sold year-to-date.”

As with February 2025, the March 2025 hardware sales are following on March 2024’s decline of -32%. It worth noting that hardware sales for the 2023 period were up by a significant percentage (68% in February 2023, 10% in March 2023). The March 2024 hardware decline could be corrective following the 2023 spike, but 2025’s continued decline seems to be more indicative of how the current console generation is aging.

Despite the breakthrough success of several of March’s titles, overall sales continue to drop. Piscatella noted, “The only segments showing growth compared to a year ago were non-mobile subscription (+11%) and digital premium downloads on console (+12%). Mobile content spending in the month finished 6% behind March 2024 (mobile source: Sensor Tower).”

As stated above, Assassin’s Creed Shadows soared to 2nd place on the year-to-date list. It’s not the only March title to make it to this list, especially as 2025’s titles start to displace last year’s titles. Hazelight’s Split Fiction took 10th place, while sports titles MLB: The Show 25 and WWE 2K25 took 4th and 6th place, respectively. All of these games have the appeal of previous games backing them up — franchise recognition in the case of WWE 2K, MLB: The Show and Assassin’s Creed, and critically acclaimed previous games from the studio in the case of Split Fiction.

Source:Gamesbeat