The NPD sales results for the month of January 2016 have been released, giving us an insight into how the industry is doing compared to last year in terms of sales. With January always being a slow month for video games with no AAA title release, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 managed to stay on top of game sales. Despite it’s strong numbers, overall retail game sales were down 4% year over year, from January 2015’s $627.6 million spent to 2016’s $605.2 million.
Here is the list of top selling performers for the month.
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 (X1, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
- Grand Theft Auto V (X1, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
- NBA 2K16 (X1, PS4, 360, PS3)
- Star Wars: Battlefront (X1, PS4, 360, PS3)
- Fallout 4 (X1, PS4, PC)
- Minecraft: Console Edition (X1, PS4, 360, PS3)
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege (X1, PS4, PC)
- Madden NFL 16 (X1, PS4, 360, PS3)
- Lego: Marvel Avengers (X1, PS4, 360, PS3, Wii U, 3DS, Vita)
- FIFA 16 (X1, PS4, 360, PS3)
Sony’s PlayStation 4 continued to lead consoles, despite hardware sales being down down 15% year over year, from 2015’s $185 million to this year’s $157 million. NPD analyst Liam Callahan pointed out the total figure of sales remained flat throughout the price cuts of current generation consoles.
“In January 2016, however, the sales of [current] generation consoles declined by 8 percent, despite relatively flat unit sales, as average prices dipped by 6 percent as a result of price cuts that took place between January 2015 and January 2016.”