Madden NFL 20, Nintendo Switch rule quiet August - NPD

News by Sherif Saed Contributor

Published on Sept. 13, 2019

The last of the year's uneventful months for game releases, August, has turned in predictable results at US retail.

The NPD Group has published its report for August, covering retail sales of games, hardware and accessories. The report, as always, includes some digital data from select publishers.

August's revenue came in at $666 million, a 18% decline compared to last year. Unfortunately, all the distinct categories tracked by NPD saw a decline.

Hardware

As it has done for most of this year, the Nintendo Switch is once again the top-selling platform, continuing its lead this year. Hardware sales brought in just $167 million in August, a 22% drop compared to the same period last year.

The Switch remains the best-selling platform of 2019, and, as we've come to expect from the hybrid console, it's the only platform seeing any growth.

Software

Software sales amounted to $257 million in August, a decline of 22%. This revenue was so low, in fact, the NPD pointed out it's the lowest ever for the month since August, 1998.

Unsurprisingly, Madden NFL 20 was the month's biggest hit in dollar sales, and is now 2019's third bestseller. This is the seventh August in a row where Madden NFL was the top seller.

At number two comes a surprise appearance by Minecraft, which is unprecedented. Outside of Madden NFL 20, the only other August release that ranked in the top ten was Switch exclusive Astral Chain, which landed at number ten.

Speaking of Switch, five of the top ten in August were all Switch exclusives.