I was cleaning out my old bookmarks in 2026 when I stumbled on the NPD Group's January 2023 US sales chart. Man, talk about a blast from the past. I remember that month like it was yesterday: a weird little window when the holiday rush had faded, but the year was already coming out swinging. January is usually a slow month for game releases, but 2023 said, 'hold my energy drink.' We got Dead Space, Forspoken, One Piece Odyssey, Fire Emblem Engage, and the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions of Monster Hunter Rise. Hi-Fi Rush shadow-dropped as a day-one Xbox Game Pass title, and Persona 3 and Persona 4 finally landed on modern platforms. As a longtime player, I was eating good.

Then I looked at the actual top 20. The NPD Group revealed the best-selling premium games in the US for January 2023, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was sitting pretty at number one. No shocker there. That game was a juggernaut. The critically acclaimed Dead Space remake took second place, which made me grin. That remake was a banger. Two sports games followed: Madden NFL 23 at three and FIFA 23 at four. Nintendo Switch exclusive Fire Emblem Engage placed fifth, while Forspoken and One Piece Odyssey took seventh and ninth. Long story short, the chart was a mix of surefire blockbusters and new challengers.

Here is the top 10 as I remember it from that NPD drop:

I do not have the full six and eight spots burned into my brain, but the big dogs were clear. One caveat: this was a revenue-based chart, so games ranked by dollar sales, not units sold. Also, DLC and microtransaction sales were not included. That means free-to-play monsters like Fortnite and Genshin Impact would not show up on this kind of table. For the record, Nintendo-published digital sales also did not contribute to the rankings. So the list was a rough sketch, not the whole picture.

The real plot twist for me was The Last of Us Part 1. It jumped from rank 36 in December 2022 to 11 in January 2023. Why? The HBO TV series, obviously. I remember watching the first episode and thinking, 'yep, this is going to send the game up the charts again.' And it did. That is the power of a good adaptation, folks. Meanwhile, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet held the tenth spot, while Minecraft and Mario Kart 8 sat in the bottom half. Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales was right above NHL 23, which closed out the list at number 20. Not bad for a bunch of games that had been out for a minute.

February 2023 was already looming, and I remember the chatter. Hogwarts Legacy, Like a Dragon: Ishin, Atomic Heart, and Destiny 2: Lightfall were all on deck. People were debating whether Hogwarts Legacy would take the top spot, and in 2026 we know how that story ended: it was a massive success for WB Games and a sales beast. That February chart probably looked wild. But January was the appetizer. It was a month where a horror remake, a new IP, an anime tie-in, and a tactical RPG all shared the spotlight. That is the kind of variety I love in this industry.

Now, looking back from 2026, the January 2023 NPD chart feels like a time capsule. The industry has changed a lot since then: new hardware rumors, subscription services evolving, and live-service games still raking in dough. But the fundamentals? They are the same. A great game can still pop off. A TV show can still resurrect a back catalog title. And Call of Duty can still sit at the top like it owns the place. So yeah, the more things change, the more they stay the same. If you ever want to understand a year in gaming, just look at the January charts. They tell you who came out swinging, who stumbled, and who was about to blow up. And in 2023, that story was just getting started.