Hogwarts Legacy Is on the Verge of Beating MW3 and Breaking a 15-Year Record

Hogwarts Legacy is currently the best-selling game of the year, fending off Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. If this holds until the end of the year, it will end up breaking a record in the process. For 15 straight years, the best-selling game each year has been a Call of Duty game. This has only been broken two times, and both times it’s been by Rockstar Games. These two games are GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2. That means for 15 years, only Call of Duty and Rockstar Games have worn the crown. The last game of not this mold came in 2008. In 2008, the best-selling game of the year was Wii Play. 

This is an incredible achievement for Hogwarts Legacy, assuming it holds onto the spot between now and the end of year. How many copies it has sold to date, we don’t know. As of early May, it was at 15 million, but this was before the Nintendo Switch version was released and only one day into the release of the PS4 and Xbox One versions. Further, this was before the holiday season, chiefly Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas. 

Developed by Avalanche Software and published by WB Games, Hogwarts Legacy debuted back on February 10, 2023, and according to most it’s a very solid game, if not a great game. Despite some outlier reviews weighing it down, it boasts a very solid 85 on Metacritic to go with its commercial success. 

“While it doesn’t do everything perfectly, Hogwarts Legacy stimulates the imagination with a rich world to explore and gameplay that empowers and thrills the player,” reads a snippet of our review of the game. “The Harry Potter films had the tough task of taking words on a page and creating a visual language for them. Hogwarts Legacy had the even tougher task of taking that visual language and making it interactive, ultimately expanding it all into something that is fun to play and immerse yourself in. Although there’s still a long year ahead of us and tons of great looking games on the horizon, Hogwarts Legacy is already one of the best games of 2023.”

As for whether or not we think Hogwarts Legacy will hold onto its top spot, probably. A vast majority of a game’s sales happen within the first week of release. So unless it is currently very close, it’s hard to imagine Modern Warfare 3 overtaking it before the end of the year.