The NPD Group, a market research company that tracks important data across a variety of industries, has just released their July findings on the gaming market. According to VentureBeat, Square Enix’s “Octopath Traveler” for the Nintendo Switch was the top earning game of the month. In terms of US dollar sales, it outdid other popular games “Grand Theft Auto V” and “Mario Kart 8” which placed 2nd and 3rd respectively.
When looking at dollar sales of individual titles from participating publishers, several Nintendo exclusives actually made it into the top 10.
- Octopath Traveler at #1
- Mario Kart 8 at #3
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild #5
- Super Mario Odyssey at #7
- Mario Tennis Aces at #10
Nintendo is clearly doing a phenomenal job with the Switch. NPD analyst Mat Piscatella had this to say about their stellar performance:
“Nintendo Switch is the only platform showing year-on-year growth in full-game dollar sales with gains of nearly 70 percent compared to a year ago, despite digital sales on Nintendo platforms not currently being tracked by The NPD Group. Year-to-date sales of full-game software on Nintendo Switch have more than doubled when compared to a year ago.”
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He followed this up noting:
“Nintendo Switch was July’s best-selling hardware platform in both dollars and units sold. This is the seventh month that Switch has led in dollar sales since launching in March 2017, and the first since December 2017. Unit sales of Nintendo hardware in July 2018 reached its highest point for a July month since 2009.”
Despite Nintendo’s remarkable performance with the Switch, Sony’s PlayStation 4 is still the top selling console of the year. Another fact worth pointing out is that the industry as a whole has seen incredible growth, achieving a 17% increase compared with the numbers from July of last year.
Given the increasing popularity of the Switch, it will be very interesting to see how sales of the console will perform across the latter half of the year with the holiday shopping season bound to have a huge impact on their year’s numbers. Could the reigning king of console sales, the PS4, actually be dethroned this year? The surging popularity of both Switch and its exclusive titles might make it a possibility.
