Third-party publishers Take-Two, EA conquer US game sales charts for September

Sports games and Gearbox's looter-shooter Borderlands 4 help two publishers take over console game sales charts in the US.

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Circana's latest games industry data report shows interesting trends for September 2025. According to the latest info from Circana senior director Mat Piscatella, two publishers had more best-selling games on PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo than the rest: Take-Two Interactive and Electronic Arts, with EA being the best-selling games publisher of the month.

While it's not surprising that annual games like NBA 2K and EA Sports would show up on the best-sellers list, Take-Two benefitted from the breakout success of Borderlands 4, which was the #1 best-selling game in the US for that month.

• Read more: Xbox had 5 out of the top 10 best-selling games of July

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EA had five games on the list, and was the top publisher. Games include: EA Sports FC 26, College Football 26, Madden NFL 26, NHL 26, and the Kickoff Bundle (includes Madden NFL 26 and College Football 26).

Take-Two Interactive had four games on the list: Borderlands 4, NBA 2K26, Grand Theft Auto V, and Red Dead Redemption 2.

There are some caveats with this data--for one, the sales are estimated and limited in a few ways. Some games on the list don't include digital sales. This mostly goes for Nintendo games, for example the new Super Mario Galaxy double-pack doesn't have digital sales attached to it, neither does the new Donkey Kong.

So it's entirely possible that those games are selling gangbusters digitally on the Switch 2, but those numbers aren't actually included in Circana's data.

As for the full list of 2025's best-sellers so far, that lineup is also dominated by both Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive. Both publishers could have a stellar year as a result, at least when it comes to game sales, and EA is currently up for sale for $55 billion to a Saudi-backed investment consortium.

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