The most interesting game sales data is full of old and obscure games

Every month, Circana video game analyst Matt Piscatella publishes fascinating data about video game sales on Bluesky, highlighting trends like November is a historically bad month for gaming consoles and Battlefield 6Its big launch is in October. But he doesn’t just share data on what’s selling best; Recently, he’s also been posting colorful lists of games that have sold just one physical copy during a certain period of time, and the lists often include old games that take me down memory lane or titles I didn’t know existed.

List of games that have sold one physical copy In OctoberFor example, the Xbox 360 version of Exhaustion paradise and Hasbro Family Game Night 3 For PS3. Piscatella posted on Thursday.2025 Circana Thread for Seikos“Highlight games that sold only one physical unit over the course of the year A whole year Across various mobile devices and consoles.

The list of games that sold a single unit in October was born a question Piscatella says: From a user on Bluesky Edge. “People seem to enjoy the combination of a trip down memory lane and the treasure hunt idea that these toys exist somewhere,” Piscatella says. Then people started asking him about it, so he thought it would be fun to keep doing it.

Circana is able to track the data because it has agreements with “all the major retailers” that allow it to collect and analyze point-of-sale data, Piscatella says. “Ifa’s retailer POS system scans the product as a sale, and it will appear in the data.” This means that all of the games he mentioned in these threads “had a new unit floating around in there somehow that was sold through a register or via an online purchase. Maybe it was a unit that was lost somewhere in the back, or buried under the screen, or who knows.”

While it’s fun to look back and laugh at some of the toys people have bought – I feel sorry for the poor soul who bought it Metroid: Other m As for last year’s Wii – people buying an old, obscure game from a store is more common than you might think, Piscatella says. “There were more than 1,000 games across all platforms (including PC) that sold between one and five new physical units in the US during 2025, while more than 3,500 different games sold at least one new physical unit at retail last year overall,” Piscatella said. “Retailers are hiding all kinds of things in their stores.”

I asked Piscatella how long he plans to continue creating threads that highlight games that sell only one copy. “As long as it stays fun, I guess so,” he says. “But who knows.”