Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero set the anime-loving world on fire when it released late last year where it almost instantly became the best selling Dragon Ball game in the United States though that attention is seemingly cooling off a bit.
Sony just released their latest round of official PlayStation top download rankings where Sparking Zero was totally absent.
When the anime arena fighter first dropped in October 2024, Dragon Ball debuted at number two on PlayStation’s digital sales across both North America and Europe only behind Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
November saw Sparking drop top 11th place in the United States and Canada and down to 18th in Europe in its second month.
Now in December’s top PlayStation downloads, Dragon Ball isn’t in the top 20 for either region.
There are likely a multitude of factors at play here of course with the honeymoon launch period for the game coming to an end as we similarly saw Bandai Namco’s other big fighter of 2024, Tekken 8, drop off of the ranks after two months there as well.
We have to also factor in the lack of new DLC content over that time, which should be changing very soon, while also acknowledging the Winter sale season that Sparking Zero largely sat out on.
Those discounts are reflected in older titles like Grand Theft Auto 5, Hogwarts Legacy, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Cyberpunk 2077 and more jump up the charts in December.
• 1. Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
• 2. NBA 2K25
• 3. EA Sports Madden NFL 25
• 4. Grand Theft Auto 5
• 5. EA Sports FC 25
• 6. EA Sports College Football 25
• 7. Phasmophobia
• 8. Hogwarts Legacy
• 9. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
• 10. Astro Bot
• 11. Minecraft
• 12. Mortal Kombat 1
• 13. Helldivers 2
• 14. Arma Reforger
• 15. Gran Turismo 7
• 16. The Crew Motorfest
• 17. Cyberpunk 2077
• 18. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
• 19. UFC 5
• 20. NHL 25
Interestingly, the only fighter that did appear on the last PlayStation charts of 2024 was Mortal Kombat 1.
The precariously positioned Warner Bros. title made it back onto the best seller’s list for the second month in a row after dipping out for a while despite the release of MK1’s Khaos Reigns expansion.
Like the other aforementioned games, Mortal Kombat seems to have benefitted a good bit from its steep discounts that brought the price down as much as 50% including the new content.
That was enough to make MK1 rise to the 12th highest spot in North America to close out the year.
One thing that is disappointing to see, however, is the those holiday sales do not appear to have helped the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection.
The MvC collection nearly topped Sony’s PlayStation 4 charts in September, but haven’t managed to appear back on since.
The compilation did return to the overall U.S. game sales charts for November when the physical edition released, and we’ll have to wait and see if that will apply to December too.
Tekken 8 and Street Fighter 6 did not chart either while also being discounted.
Despite Dragon Ball’s drop off in sales, there seems to be no shortage of players on PlayStation 5 at all and in fact continues to perform quite well.
Mat Piscatella’s latest active user ranks for the last week of December shows both Sparking Zero and Mortal Kombat 1 in the top 15 most played titles on PlayStation (though they are absent on Xbox and Steam).
Circana US Player Engagement Tracker – Top 15 Titles by Total Weekly US Players (Not Concurrent) – W/E Dec 28, 2024
– Fortnite reclaims #1 spot on PS5 chart (and may soon do the same on XBS)
– Palworld back into top 10 on Steam with Feybreak update
– Cyberpunk 2077 returns to XBS top 15— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) January 6, 2025 at 9:28 AM
And another Marvel game is dominating all the charts of course being Marvel Rivals.
We’ll be very interested to see how Tekken 8, MK1 and Dragon Ball all performed on the full year’s list of best selling titles in the coming weeks.
Unless Sparking Zero’s DLC comes out sometime this month too, we may not see any fighting games in January’s charts when the time comes, but we’ll have to wait a while longer for that.
