Marathon Was One Of March’s Best-Selling Games In The U.S.

Marathon was the fourth best-selling game in the U.S. during its launch month of March, according to Circana, and that’s a heck of an achievement given how stacked March was with new releases.

This comes from Circana and senior analyst Mat Piscatella, who shared that MLB The Show 26 took the top spot in the market research company’s published U.S. sales charts for March, leading in dollar sales. Right behind it was Resident Evil Requiem, which debuted at No. 1 in February and is now the fifth best-selling Resident Evil game ever (behind 5, the remake of 4, Village, and the original 4).

In third was WWE 2K26, and then comes Marathon. It is possible that Marathon and any of these other games in the top spots were quietly lapped by Pokémon Pokopia, though. Nintendo does not share digital sales numbers with Circana, so it may be that Pokopia would be placed significantly higher here if Nintendo was more forthcoming.

Even so, this is quite the achievement during such a stuffed month, and one that will hopefully calm distressed Marathon fans somewhat after some of them crashed out a bit over player numbers. It’s hard to blame them: Marathon exists at a strange crossroads for developer Bungie, and as a continuously updated multiplayer shooter releasing into a world that’s been openly hostile to several of those lately, there’s plenty to worry about if you like either Marathon or Bungie. While initial sales numbers were good but not fantastic (an estimated 1.2 million copies sold in the first month), people genuinely seem to be enjoying it, and Bungie at least seems committed to making it sparkle for existing players and appeal to those who have shrugged it off.

Coming in at No.7 in the U.S. was Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection. Crimson Desert debuted at No.15, which may seem a bit low given the game’s popularity. However, Pearl Abyss is another publisher that’s not sharing its digital sales numbers with Circana, which means there’s probably a lot left out for this game as well. As Piscatella notes, Crimson Desert, MLB The Show 26, and Pokémon Pokopia led the pack in Circana’s projected full game spending, so make of that what you will.

*Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana’s data. Some publishers, such as Nintendo, do not share certain digital data for this report.

Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is back in the top 20, jumping from No.165 to No.17 thanks to its PC release in March. Piscatella shares that the PC version of Death Stranding 2 accounted for 85 percent of full game dollar sales for that month.

Mario Kart World also saw a leap. Piscatella says this is due to Nintendo Switch 2 Mario Kart World bundles beginning to run out of stock, pushing more people to purchase the standalone game than they were before.

A quick detour to the top 10 best-selling PC games chart for March shows that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019) quietly had a very good month. Piscatella points to a 90-percent-off Steam sale that brought Modern Warfare down to $5.99 for a bit, likely encouraging many folks to pick it up on impulse.

Overall, it was a great month for game sales. Spending on game content was up 8 percent year-over-year to $4.6 billion, and console games, PC, cloud, non-console VR, and non-mobile subscriptions all saw spending increases. Hardware, too, did well. Spending on hardware was up 69 percent year-over-year to $500 million, mostly thanks to the Nintendo Switch 2, though PlayStation 5 spending also rose by 3 percent. Piscatella reports that the Switch 2 was the best-selling hardware across both unit sales and dollar sales, both for the month of March and the year-to-date, and the PS5 is second on all counts.

The Switch 2 remains the second-fastest-selling hardware platform in U.S. tracked history, trailing only the GBA, making it still the fastest-selling console at the moment. It’s still 12 percent ahead of the original Switch in sales at the same point in both their life cycles, but it seems like it may be slowing down. In February, it was trending 45 percent ahead of the Switch 1, and in December of last year it was a whopping 94 percent higher. That’s likely the previously reported slowing in sales over the holidays kicking in. But it will be interesting to see what happens in April—many have speculated that Pokémon Pokopia could be a system seller. Will it be?

Correction: 4/22/2026, 9:40 a.m. ET: Marathon sold an estimated 1.2 million copies in its first month, per Alinea Analytics.