Today the NPD released its figures for the U.S. gaming market in the month of October, and we get the lowdown directly by Analyst Mat Piscatella.
First and foremost, we get the top-20 ranking for software sales.
As usual, there are some games for which the NPD can’t track digital sales, and those are marked with the two asterisks.
Middle-earth: Shadow of War was the best selling game of October, showing over 20% growth in sales compared to Shadow of Mordor. Second-ranked is Assassin’s Creed Origin, while Super Mario Odyssey grabs third place with a single platform and without digital sales.
Super Mario Odyssey also had the third best launch for a packaged Mario action-adventure title in recorded history. Interestingly, in a press release sent by Nintendo today, the publisher claimed that Mario is the top-selling game of the month according to the NPD, but what we see here is decidedly different. It is the best-selling game for Nintendo Switch, and contacted on Twitter Piscatella explained that Nintendo is counting only packaged sales for its reporting.
Interestingly, Forza Motorsport 7 managed to narrowly beat Gran Turismo Sport, even if it had a few more days on the shelves. That being said, sales of racing games more than doubled compared to October 2017. RPGs also show strong growth, with a 20% increase year-on-year.
The best selling publisher in October was Ubisoft, while Activision is the best selling for this year so far, with Destiny 2 being the best selling game since January.
The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling platform in October, while the PS4 remains the top-selling platform for 2018 as a whole.
You can check out Piscatella’s full insight in the video below.