It’s mid-October, and that means we are in the thick of game-release season. Market research company The NPD Group has announced which 10 games sold the most physical copies in the U.S. for the month of September (not counting console bundles). These are the titles that made the list:
| Xbox One | Xbox 360 | PS4 | PS3 | Wii U | ||
| 1 | NBA 2K16 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 2 | Madden NFL 16 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 3 | Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 4 | FIFA 16 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 5 | Destiny: The Taken King | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 6 | Super Mario Maker | ✓ | ||||
| 7 | Disney Infinity 3.0 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| 8 | Mad Max | ✓ | ✓ | |||
| 9 | NHL 16 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
| 10 | Minecraft | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
As you can see, the top two slots went to sports games, and two more sports games made it to numbers four and nine. According to NPD Games Industry Analyst Liam Callahan, “NBA 2K16 had the best launch month ever for any Sports Game.”
Super Mario Maker is the only single-console game on this list, which is both impressive and great news for Nintendo. According to a press release from Nintendo this week, sales of the Wii U have gone up 110% since the release of Super Mario Maker.
You’ll also notice that Disney Infinity 3.0 made the cut, but Skylanders SuperChargers and LEGO Dimensions did not. This is probably just because the latter two games came out in the second half of the month and had fewer days to compete on shelves.
Overall, sales of games and hardware have gone down from September of last year in the U.S., sliding from $1.10 billion to $1.01 billion. But that’s not too surprising: last year in September we had Destiny to compete with. Plus, sales of accessories such as amiibos have gone up.
Sony’s PS4 is the top console in the U.S. in terms of sales for the fifth consecutive month. Since the price of that console just dropped $50, it seems likely that that trend will continue for at least one more month.
