Circana (formerly NPD Group) has announced the bestselling games of May, and overall the market was more subdued in the last month of spring.

Compared to last May, North America saw a 40% drop in consumption this May, including consoles. The drop is understandable given that this was the same time last year that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released, which also boosted Switch sales significantly. This May, however, the PlayStation 5 triumphed, with one of the company’s games in the top 20 of the game sales chart, Ghost of Tsushima, coming in at number one after being at number 71 (!) in April. So the PC port of the game was a big help for Sony. Nintendo had a competing title (Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Remake), but it wasn’t enough to win.

https://x.com/MatPiscatella/status/1810377988434964526

Helldivers 2 was also a big hit and is still in the top half of the list in May, and since it was also released for PlayStation 5 and PC, Sony is really tapping into the PC gamer’s wallet. It’s no wonder that several exclusives (The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn…) made their way from Sony’s console to the PC. Circana saw a 3% drop in content consumption, but the mobile market grew by 13%. With more and more games coming to mobile (see Capcom’s Resident Evil titles) and cheaper to buy compared to consoles, it’s no wonder this is happening.

The Nintendo Switch saw the biggest decline, which is understandable since, firstly, the console is more than seven years old, secondly, everyone who wanted to buy it must have already bought it, and thirdly, the public is waiting for Nintendo’s new hardware, which the big N will probably release in March 2025 (it will be officially unveiled by then at the latest, but we’d rather think they’ll launch it by then).

Source: WCCFTech