Highlights
- US gaming spend jumped 12% to $5.3 billion in March 2026, fueled by a 69% hardware surge from the Nintendo Switch 2.
- MLB The Show 26 hit #1, while Bungie’s Marathon outperformed global hit Crimson Desert, which fell to #15 on US charts.
- The Switch 2 remains the month’s top-selling console, tracking 12% higher in unit sales than the original Switch's launch period.
If you ever needed proof that global hype doesn't automatically translate to regional chart dominance, March 2026 just provided the perfect case study. Video game spending in the United States surged by 12% compared to last year, driven by a chaotic and highly competitive launch window. While Sony's MLB The Show 26 predictably knocked it out of the park to claim the number one spot overall, the real story of the month is an exception: Bungie’s $40 extraction shooter, Marathon, defied the odds to take fourth place, completely overshadowing the domestic performance of Pearl Abyss’s global $70 USD mega-hit, Crimson Desert.
According to Circana executive director and industry analyst Mat Piscatella, overall spending across software, hardware, and accessories saw a significant boost. Looking at the top of the charts, MLB The Show 26 led the charge, followed by Capcom's Resident Evil Requiem in second and WWE 2K26 taking third.
Bungie’s Marathon secured a highly impressive fourth-place finish, edging out the heavily anticipated Pokémon Pokopia, which landed in fifth. What makes Marathon's placement so remarkable is that these charts are ranked by dollar sales, not units sold. Launching at a budget-friendly $40, Marathon had to move significantly more copies to financially outpace full-priced $70 releases like Crimson Desert.
Steam
Crimson Desert: Massive Global Sales Fail to Crack US Top 10
This brings us to the month’s biggest shocker. Despite being cited by Piscatella as a major driver of the industry's 12% spending growth and moving over 5 million copies globally in its first month, Crimson Desert only managed to land at number 15 on the US charts. It narrowly beat out Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, which surged from 165th all the way to 16th place thanks to its new PC port, as per Wccftech.
Pearl Abyss reported that Crimson Desert topped 2 million sales in its first 24 hours, fueled by over 3 million pre-launch wishlists and a peak Steam concurrency of 276,261 users. Alinea Analytics estimates the game generated around $200M in its first two weeks alone, with $75M coming directly from PlayStation 5 players. However, this staggering momentum was heavily distributed across international markets, leaving its US footprint surprisingly light.
In stark contrast, Marathon leaned hard into concentrated American interest. Bungie's sci-fi revival moved an estimated 1.2 million copies in total. Breaking down its domestic ecosystem, roughly 70% of those sales—or about 800,000 units—came from Steam. Because its audience was so intensely concentrated in the United States, Marathon managed to chart across PlayStation, Xbox, and PC platforms locally. Crimson Desert, on the other hand, only cracked the PlayStation chart in the US—and even there, it sat below Marathon.
Steam
Shaking Up the 2026 Year-to-Date Best-Sellers
These March releases have completely reshuffled the best-sellers list for 2026 so far. Resident Evil Requiem still holds the crown as the best-selling game of the year, but MLB The Show 26 has skyrocketed straight into second place. WWE 2K26 follows closely in third, with Marathon proudly sitting at sixth.
Further down the yearly list, Pokémon Pokopia just missed the top 10, landing in 12th place, while Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection grabbed 15th spot. Crimson Desert, despite its massive global haul and undeniable financial success, missed the US year-to-date top 20 entirely.
The hardware sector saw equally dramatic shifts, driven almost entirely by Nintendo. It was a Nintendo Switch 2 month all the way, with the new console finishing as the best-selling piece of hardware and fueling a massive 69% spike in hardware spending compared to March 2025. As we approach its one-year anniversary, Piscatella notes that Switch 2 unit sales are currently tracking 12% higher than the original Switch over the exact same 10-month launch period.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 also held its own, finishing as the second-best-selling console for the month and enjoying a 3% spending bump year-over-year. Overall, March proves the US video game industry is incredibly healthy right now, with software, hardware, and accessory spending all up across the board.
Moving forward, all eyes are on Capcom to see if Resident Evil Requiem can maintain its momentum at the top of the yearly charts, potentially giving the publisher two consecutive years with a top-five domestic hit following last year's Monster Hunter Wilds.
