Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs comes as no surprise as the leader in game sales charts for the month of May followed by Nintendo’s Mario Kart 8 as the second best-selling game.
NPD published its monthly game sales report on Monday revealing that total sale of hardware and physical gaming software amounted to $586 million in May which is 52 percent higher than last year’s $387 million.
Sony’s PS4, which has been leading the gaming console sales since the beginning of the year, has beaten Microsoft’s Xbox One for the fifth consecutive month.
Sony has sold 7 million units of PS4 as of April while only 5 million Xbox One devices were shipped. On the other hand, Wii U has managed to earn the third place, having sold 6.2 million units since its debut in November 2012.
Major players strategically release new games in the holiday season and NPD’s statistics show that American gamers keep the field alive by buying games even after the holiday season.
Considering from the aspect of hardware, sales went up by 95 percent at $187 million which was $96 million last year in May.
Retail physical game sales earned a total of $274 million this May, an increase of 57 percent compared to the $175 million in 2013.
“After six months of declines, software rebounded in May 2013 driven by new launches such as Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8, Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Kirby: Triple Deluxe,” said NPD analyst Liam Callahan.
In the software front, gamers purchased 20 percent more than last year, which amounted to $227.9 million. Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs was the major contributor to this amount as the game pushed behind other leading games in just 24 hours and earned itself the “fastest selling product” label while also hitting the 4 million sales mark within the first week.
Despite being launched at the end of the month, Mario Kart 8 managed to sell 1.2 million copies in three days.
Callahan said, “Collectively, May 2014 launches sold 800 percent more in dollar sales than May 2013 launches did in their respective launch month.”
“New launches represented 50 percent of dollar sales this month, which compared to only 9 percent for new launches in May 2013.”
NPD’s report highlights only a part of the total game sales as it takes into account only the physical game sales in the US. When digital sales and also sale in other countries are considered, the numbers might paint a different picture.
