Red Dead was the top-selling game of November, but Call of Duty is still outselling year-to-date. Meanwhile, the pocket monsters have shown up.
The video game industry in the United States was flat year-over-year in November, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. U. S. consumers spent $2.693 billion on hardware, software, and accessories. In November 2017, that number was $2.706 billion. Overall, the month was still strong considering it had a tough comparison to last year.
“Gains in hardware, accessories and game card spending were offset by a decline in software due to the shift of the launch Call of Duty into the October month,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “Year-to-date spending across video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards has grown 16 percent when compared to the same period a year ago, to $13.2 billion. This is the highest year-to-date total spend achieved since the $13.9 billion achieved between January and November 2010.”
Hardware continues to grow as more people jump onto the Xbox One X, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. And new games like Battlefield V and Fallout 76 both performed well — although they are both existing in the shadows of bigger games.
Let’s do the software charts.
NPD tracks physical sales at retailers, but it also gets digital data directly from publishers. But not every company participates. For example, Nintendo doesn’t share its first-party sales, and Activision Blizzard does not provide its Battle.net sales.
These charts are sorted by dollar sales — not number of units sold.
*Does not include digital sales
**Does not include PC digital sales
November’s top 20 is most notable for once again proving how October’s strength. The top two games on this chart were the two major releases from last month. And one of those was Call of Duty, which has traditionally debuted in November. Its earlier release instead left a gaping hole in what is traditionally one of the biggest months of the year.
