Spider-Man: Miles Morales outsold Uncharted: The Lost Legacy but couldn't beat Spider-Man PS4
November was a good month for video games, as almost everyone came out a winner.
November 2020 was video game's biggest ever month in terms of digital revenue, according to a new report by the market analysts at SuperData.
During the month, digital spending grew to a staggering $11.5 billion. This includes everything from full game downloads, to DLC, as well as microtransactions across PC, console and mobile.
On PC, the biggest winner has been World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, which immediately became the fastest-selling PC game ever at launch. According to SuperData, Shadowlands is responsible for World of Warcraft's biggest monthly revenue since 2008, as well as its highest player numbers since 2010.
On console, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has unsurprisingly managed to claim the top stop. SuperData estimates that some 5.7 million copies were sold digitally during the month, a 7% increase over Black Ops 4 - the previous record holder. Activision actually broke this news at the game's launch.
Warzone continued to be popular, too, boasting 2.7 as many players as Cold War managed to attract in November.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla was another hot console game in November, landing at number four in terms of revenue. The game sold 1.7 million units digitally, 50% more than Odyssey at launch. Indeed, Ubisoft previously said that Valhalla is responsible for the biggest release week in franchise history.
Interestingly, SuperData noted that though overall revenue was up due to sales, in-game spending fell down 62%. As rightly pointed out, however, Valhalla only just introduced major microtransactions. At launch, players only had a handful of outfits and skins to buy.
One of the bigger exclusives in November has been Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which SuperData said has sold 663,000 units digitally across PS4 and PS5. This is well below the 2.2 million the 2018 Spider-Man managed to shift on PS4 at launch digitally (3.3M overall), but it's more than Uncharted: The Lost Legacy's launch day digital haul.
One of the biggest games in terms of player activity and mindshare in November has undoubtedly been Among Us, which, according to the report, had around half-a-billion monthly active users in November, making it "the most popular game ever" in terms of monthly players. These massive numbers, however, did not translate into massive earnings, as Among Us doesn't offer enough for players to spend money on.
That said, PC was far and away the most profitable platform, for the simple fact that the game costs $5 there. This is despite PC accounting for only 3% of the total player base.