Despite the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 or the presence of the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series, the North American region kept its old faces on the top – here’s NPD Group’s December report.

In December, the North American players spent a total of 7.7 billion dollars on video games, additional content, and hardware – this is 25% up year-on-year. Due to the new consoles having severely limited supply, the Nintendo Switch won in terms of both dollars and units sold. Because of this result, the Switch had the second-best year of any console in history in 2020, trailing only the Nintendo Wii in 2008.

Here’s the December top 20:

1.         Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
2.         Cyberpunk 2077
3.         Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
4.         Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
5.         Madden NFL 21
6.         Animal Crossing: New Horizons
7.         Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
8.         NBA 2K21
9.         Immortals Fenyx Rising
10. Super Mario 3D All-Stars
11. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
12. Just Dance 2021
13. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity
14. FIFA 21
15. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
16. Super Mario Odyssey
17. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
18. Super Mario Party
19. Ring Fit Adventure
20. Mortal Kombat 11

As you can see, Cyberpunk couldn’t break the somewhat tiresome presence of Call of Duty at the top, but if you think that’s more of the same, here are the top-10 best-selling games of 2020:

1.         Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
2.         Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
3.         Animal Crossing: New Horizons
4.         Madden NFL 21
5.         Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
6.         The Last of Us Part II
7.         Ghost of Tsushima
8.         Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
9.         Super Mario 3D All-Stars
10. Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 1

Three PlayStation 4-exclusive titles are on the list, but the Nintendo Switch’ killer app, the new Animal Crossing, finished in front of all of them.

Gamesindustry reports that in Japan, a total of 87% of the consoles sold in 2020 were Nintendo Switches! (3.9 million units for the regular version, and a little over two million for the Nintendo Switch Lite.) This is a 30% year-on-year increase. A total of 6.85 million consoles were sold in Japan, and in second place, a landslide behind the Switch, we find the PlayStation 4 with 543 thousand units. (The PlayStation 5 hit 225K.)

Japan spent 3.5 billion dollars on video games in 2020. It’s a 12.5% year-on-year increase. Console sales saw a 16.4% rise (bringing in 1.8 billion dollars), and boxed/physical copies of games brought 1.75 billion, resulting in a 9% increase. The best-selling physical game – unsurprisingly – was Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sold 6378103 copies. We see another Nintendo game in second, which sold less than 25% of this amount! (Ring Fit Adventure, which sold 1591366 copies.) Only ONE Sony game reached the top ten (Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 1 with 949379 copies).

So at this rate, the Switch can indeed pull 2021 in, but Sony and Microsoft are eager to have more of their respective next-gen consoles sold.

Source: WCCFTech, VG247