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

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.

“March video 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).”

Circana March 2025: Top 20 best-selling games in the U.S.

A grand total of seven new games have made it onto the March list, the highest number of 2025. These games represent a relatively wide array of genres, from the action-adventure titles like Assassin’s Creed Shadows and Hazelight’s latest title, Split Fiction; to sports titles like WWE 2K25 and MLB: The Show 25. Bleach: Rebirth of Souls is a fighting game title, while the remaster of the first two Suikoden games made it to the 18th place.

One game particularly worthy of note on this list is Xenoblade Chronicles X, the remaster of which was released in March as the Definitive Edition. The game originally launched on the unpopular Wii U, so the remaster is reaching a much larger audience. Nintendo doesn’t report digital sales to Circana, so its inclusion on the sales charts is based solely off of physical sales. Given this fact, it’s impressive that a remaster of a ten-year-old action-RPG made it so high on the list, and could have placed even higher if digital sales were taken into account.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Will it be enough for Ubisoft?

The latest Assassin’s Creed game, Shadows, has been the subject of no small amount of discourse prior to its launch. One of the biggest talking points was about how the game’s sales would affect Ubisoft. The company admitted that its 2024 title Star Wars: Outlaws had “softer than expected” sales, and the company laid off 185 people earlier this year. It also reported that it was exploring “strategic options” with regards to the company’s future.

All of which is to say that Ubisoft will be keeping a close eye on Shadows’ sales. It recently spun out a new core division of its gaming business that focuses on Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six brands. Tencent invested $1.25 billion in this division last month. Shadows selling particularly well could not only help with Ubisoft’s financial situation, but could also demonstrate the franchise’s long-term staying power. But it remains to be seen if the sales will actually meet Ubisoft’s expectations.

Circana March 2025: 20 best-selling games of 2024 so far

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.