Today the NPD released its statistics for the U.S. market in the month of December, brought to is in video form by Analyst Mat Piscatella.
Video game spending during the month grew 10% year-on-year, reaching 3.3 billion dollars. This was driven by hardware that grew 27% thanks to Nintendo Switch, SNES Classic, revitalized 3DS, and the continued strength of PS4 and Xbox One.
The Nintendo Switch was the best seller in December for both hardware units and hardware spend, but the PS4 is still at the top of both categories for the full year 2017. Call of Duty WWII leads both December and the full year.
Interestingly combined sales of PS4 and Xbox One in their first fifty months on the market exceed the PS3/Xbox 360 generation by 18%, and the PS2/Xbox generation by 4%. On the other hand, the Switch has sold more consoles in its first ten months than any other console in U.S. history.
Another intriguing piece of data is that there were 314 packaged physical releases for 2017. This is 16% higher than 2016’s number and 36% higher than in 2015. Physical software sales grew year-on-year in 2017.
Below you can see the top-20 ranking for games, with Call of Duty: WWII leading at the top, followed by Star Wars: Battlefront II and Super Mario Odyssey. Since Origin and Nintendo don’t disclose digital sales, Star Wars: Battlefront II was in second place without its digital download sales on PC, and the same can be said about Super Mario Odyssey, that lacks its digital sales on Switch.
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds debuts in seventh’s place without sales of the digital PC version, basically just including the Xbox One version.
Further details can be found in the tables below, including the top games of both December and 2017 per platforms, and the top-10 games of the year overall.
You can check out the full video below, and last month’s results for the sake of comparison.