Mortal Kombat 11 claims another month - May NPD

News by Sherif Saed Contributor

Published on June 19, 2019

Mortal Kombat 11 is once again topping the charts in the quiet, pre-E3 month.

The NPD Group has revealed sales and revenue data for the games business in the US. May, unsurprisingly, saw a decline in spending across hardware and software, an overall drop of 11% compared to May last year.

Game hardware, software, accessories and game cards combined generated $641 million during the month.

Hardware

Hardware spending in May declined by a whopping 20% compared to last year, the result of a drop in unit sales for PS4 and Xbox One. The Nintendo Switch, however, is the only platform that continues to see growth, but it wasn't enough to offset the steep decline of PlayStation and Xbox.

As such, the Switch is May's best-selling console, and continues to be 2019's biggest hardware seller.

Software

Software sales across all platforms generated $262 million in May, a 13% decline compared to May last year. In fact, the NPD notes that May 2019 has had the lowest software sales since May 2013, meaning this entire the generation.

Dollar sales of new releases in May 2019 have also been the lowest in a May since 1998. All of this is to say April's best performers continued to dominate in May.

Mortal Kombat 11 is May's best-seller, and is so far 2019's best-selling game as well. It also seems to have a longer tail than most Mortal Kombat games, as MK11 nearly doubled second-month sales of any Mortal Kombat game before it.

Likewise, Days Gone kept its number two spot. New entry Total War: Three Kingdoms achieved the impressive third spot for a PC-only game, followed by Rage 2.