The American NPD Group has recapped the results of the previous decade, and we also learned which game sold the most copies throughout 2019 as well.

If we look at the 2019 hardware sales, we won’t see many surprises. According to Mat Piscatella, an analyst at NPD, the Nintendo Switch won 2019 without competition; the PlayStation 4 Slim/PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One S/Xbox One X/Xbox One S All-Digital Edition saw their sales slump. In December, the hardware spending has dropped 17% year-on-year to 973 million dollars, and in the ANNUAL spending, the decline is even bigger: a 22% drop to 3.9 billion dollars, meaning the Christmas season has once again taken up nearly a quarter of the whole year’s revenue. In the decade (2010-2019), the PlayStation 4 won, despite the PS4 skipping the first nearly four years! (Remember, the PlayStation 4 debuted in November 2013!)

Let’s look at December’s software charts (even though January slid into the inspected time frame: NPD analysed the results between December 1. 2019 and January 4, 2020):

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
2. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
3. Madden NFL 20
4. NBA 2K20
5. Luigi’s Mansion 3*
6. Pokemon Sword*
7. Mario Kart 8*
8. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate*
9. Pokemon Shield*
10. Minecraft
11. Grand Theft Auto V
12. Red Dead Redemption II
13. FIFA 20
14. Just Dance 2020
15. Need for Speed: Heat
16. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
17. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening*
18. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
19. Super Mario Party*
20. Ring Fit Adventure

(* – Digital sales not included; Minecraft’s digital sales on Xbox and PlayStation included)

Call of Duty‘s march to victory continued in December – Infinity Ward’s game won without competition. Behind it, we see Respawn’s Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, further proving that there is a demand for single-player games. After the two usual sports titles (American football, basketball), we see FIVE Nintendo games (and half of the top 20 is from them, which is not bad…), and the best-seller of the big N titles was Luigi’s Mansion 3. However, we’d like to ask where Pokémon Sword/Shield would have finished if the respective sales performances were combined…

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s success means that throughout the decade, Call of Duty has thus received its EIGHTH best-seller game. Only Rockstar/Take-Two could compete against Activision Blizzard’s juggernaut (in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V sold the most, followed by Red Dead Redemption 2 in 2018). So we can say the predictions of naming Call of Duty: Modern Warfare as the best-seller of 2019 were correct. Let’s see the top 20:

1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019
2. NBA 2K20
3. Madden NFL 20
4. Borderlands 3
5. Mortal Kombat 11
6. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
7. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
8. Kingdom Hearts III
9. Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
10. Mario Kart 8
11. Grand Theft Auto V
12. Red Dead Redemption II
13. Minecraft
14. FIFA 20
15. Anthem
16. Pokemon Sword
17. Resident Evil 2 2019
18. Luigi’s Mansion 3
19. Days Gone
20. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe

We’d like to point at #19: Days Gone is the only PlayStation 4-exclusive on the list, and it barely made the top 20! Nintendo strafed circles around Sony with its FIVE exclusives (and 2018’s Super Smash Bros. Ultimate still kept selling well, as it reached #7!). Behind Infinity Ward’s FPS, two annual sports games can be seen – Take-Two and Activision can thus be on the podium behind Activision Blizzard.

2020 will be a turbulent year: the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X will launch, Ubisoft will strike with several titles this year (Watch_Dogs Legion, új Assassin’s Creed, Gods and Monsters, Rainbow Six Quarantine, and we might even see Roller Champions debut this year…), and maybe the other AAA publishers have a few aces up their sleeves…

Source: VentureBeat, Gamesindustry

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