Following on from hardware sales, let's now take a look at the software sales within the US last year. For starters, Nintendo had half of the top 20 best-selling video games in December.
The best-selling game of December 2019 was Activision's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and further down the list was Luigi's Mansion 3 in fifth place, followed by the new Pokémon, Mario Kart, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
In 16th place was The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and this was followed by Link's Awakening, New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, Super Mario Party and Ring Fit Adventure.
As for the top ten best-selling games of 2019, Nintendo had two games on this list. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate finished in 7th place and Mario Kart was 10th. The best-selling game of the year went to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare:
The best-selling game of the decade in America was Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V, followed by a lot of Call of Duty games, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Minecraft:
The best-selling Switch game of December 2019 was Luigi's Mansion 3 and on 3DS it was Pokémon Sun and Moon.
The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella also noted how the Switch was the only system with software gains in 2019:
Dollar sales of tracked video game software declined 13% in December compared to a year ago, to $1.1B, while annual sales dropped 9% to $6.6B. Declines were experienced across all platforms in December, while Switch was the only platform with gains for the year.
In December, combined video game software sales were $1,141 million (down 13% compared to the previous year) and for the whole of 2019, a total amount of $6,564 million was made (down by 9%).
[source twitter.com]
Comments 39
Luigi's mansion beat out Pokémon? Impressive.
Over 100 million PS4 owners and no PS4 exclusives made the list? Guess most of them just buy multiplats.
2 skus for Pokemon always seemed weird to me. Still, good for Luigi's Mansion 3, it looks like a great game.
The list of best selling games from the decade is honestly just kinda sad.
@Kalmaro That's with Pokemon's sales split into two though. Let's be real, Sword and Shield are the same game.
Call of a Duty is so bad. Stop buying it
@BenAV Can't argue with that.
@Kalmaro Still pretty impressive numbers for Luigi's Mansion regardless though.
@BenAV I agree, and it deserved every one, the game is phenomenal.
I guess the reason Activision doesn't care about making a COD for Switch is because they already have so much money they don't even have to try anymore. Making the game for PS4, Xbone and PC takes no extra effort but for Switch they might actually have to try something... NEW!
Okay insults aside, I haven't played a COD in a few years and would have been willing to pick up one built for Switch. Same with GTA. Both were games I played a lot in high school on 360.
Really impressive that Smash and Mario Kart managed to hit the top 10 chart for 2019. Two exclusives on a system with a much smaller userbase vs the combined userbase of the other consoles with multiplats.
@IronMan30
NPD split Pokemon into 3 SKUs this time:
> Pokemon Sword
> Pokemon Shield
> Pokemon Sword and Shield Double Pack
The Double Pack was extremely front loaded and pretty much stopped selling after the launch week, but it still sold decent numbers.
Can’t believe Call of Duty beat Call of Duty on the 2010-2019 chart.
@SEM is that good or bad?
@Deku-Scrub People simply love FPS games, and CoD is the most mainstream of them all.
@sanderev It looks like FPS games aren't that popular anymore. The top 20 for last month only included one. And the top 10 for the year had 2 and one of them is an RPG/FPS... but COD is a behemoth.
@LUIGITORNADO No it's actually a lot of fun.
@Heavyarms55 why would they make one for switch? It wouldn't be able to run the game, and a big push with this game is now crossplay. PC/Xbox/PS4 are all playing the same game. They're all also x86 based platforms.
How is Minecraft #10 on the best selling games of the decade list? According to various articles, I've seen it at 176-180 million sales, only behind Tetris for best selling game of all time. Also, Squids eat CoD for breakfast. Booyah!
Wow I don’t have a single game in the top 10 of the decade list which does not surprise me even slightly.
I did love FPS back in the day of Quake 1-3 and Unreal Tournament. The only FPS I have brought recently is Doom 1+2. Will get Doom 3 when I get an SD card upgrade as my launch 200gb is almost full.
Turns out America likes guns. Who knew?
Pokemon sold well because of course it did. They could do a reskin of Sonic 06 with Pikachu's face on it and it would sell either way. Same with CoD.
Impressive numbers for Luigi's Mansion 3 tho. That game deserves it. Next Level did a good job.
Just how is GTA still up there? a game that released in 2013
Surely every man and his dog must own a copy by now so sales would start to slow.
I wish they would slow just so we have more chance of seeing a GTA 6 release
I guess Kojima was right Americans love first person shooter games and its the same with the UK
@LUIGITORNADO I think Pokemon is bad but people keep buying it
I'm so grateful to the Nashville Police Department for sharing this data!
@westman98 there ya go, that skewed the numbers further.
Mario Kart 8 and BOTW are the best selling exclusives of the decade. Good job Nintendo 👍
@Trajan it wouldn't be able to run the game? You're serious?
There's literally nothing stopping Activision from getting this game to run on the Switch besides their own lack of trying. Time and time again we've seen so called armchair experts like yourself say "this game won't run on Switch" or "that game won't run on Switch". And they've been proven wrong time and time again.
There's an article on this very site about this: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/02/soapbox_call_of_duty_can_work_on_switch_activision_just_needs_to_pull_the_trigger
The problem is that Activision is lazy. They don't want to try because why would they? Look at this list. They don't need to because people are buying this game on other platforms. If people stopped buying the game we might actually see that changed.
I hate Call of Duty but it would be nice to have it on Switch for the people who do like it. Activision just needs to stop "pulling an EA" with regard to the COD series on Switch.
Nintendo games are competing with games released on 3+ systems and still beasting.
@Deku-Scrub True, but neither of those had anything on Call of Duty.
Congrats to Luigi Mansion's 3. Really need to play that.
Can somebody explain to me how Nintneod can't put out more than 1 Mario Kart or Splatoon per system generation b/c the argument goes "it would dilute the brand" yet COD has 7 of the top 10 selling games for the decade?
I don't want to see Mario Kart or Splatoon become every year or 2, but surely Switch deserves it's own kart game, not just an improved port, and Splatoon was so early do we really need to wait another 5 years for Spaltoon 3?
I know some of you agree with me, but so many people are on the "1 per generation" side of the discussion. Doesn't seem that needs to be the case. Of course most of those same people are eagerly awaiting BotW 2 so I'm really just tilting at windmills.
@Deku-Scrub I wasn't surprised that Call of Duty beat Call of Duty, but I am confused as to why Call of Duty is ranked above Call of Duty.
LM3 is an outstanding game. Glad it got the sales.
Jedi Fallen Order is another great game. Making it to the top 10 of all 2019 with such a short time is just amazing!
Hardware sales down, Software sales down... Gamers are waiting for next GEN.
@rjejr Luigi Mansion 3 is an amazing piece of digital entertainment. 100% recommend it.
@Agramonte I'm going to assume you meant 3 and 2 was a typo.
I had planned on playing it at Christmas after 1 of my kids got it for a gift, but though both of them wanted to play it, neither of them wanted to play it enough to want it as THEIR gift - I got a Fitbit Versa 2 - so we haven't gotten it yet.
My birthday is in July, considering how vacant this years Switch line-up looks - we aren't interested in the least in Animal Crossing - it may be my birthday gift. Maybe a nice E3 sale?
@rjejr Beat me to the Edit.
LM3 is a good game to have as a bridge game 👍. I skipped Pokemon (already $120 in the hole with JEDI+LM3) over Christmas.
So that is my game over the Switch dry season. I do not have anything on Switch till Fairy Tail in March (if any good).
Half of the Top 10 best-selling games of December being Nintendo games is ridiculous. I don't think Nintendo has dominated the charts to that degree since the height of the Wii/DS era.
Looking at the best-selling games of the decade, it does appear Call of Duty has declined (Black Ops > Black Ops 2 > Black Ops 3 > Black Ops 4 is telling), but not enough to prevent the more recent games from not being on the list.
@Agramonte If you skip Pokemon a couple of more times you can wait and get it when all the Pokemon are back in it, probably only cost you $150.
@nintendork64 they would have to significantly downgrade the game and have it run on a different engine. That's not laziness.
Why isn't the new COD on PS3? Same reason.
Tap here to load 39 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...