Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Nintendo Switch are the biggest sellers in 2019 - NPD

News by Sherif Saed Contributor

Published on Jan. 17, 2020

2019 is over and its biggest winners are hardly surprising.

The NPD Group has revealed the winners of December 2019 and the full year in its latest industry report for America. In December, the industry generated $3 billion across software, hardware and accessories, a 15% drop compared to December 2018.

$14.6 billion was the games industry's entire revenue as tracked by NPD in 2019, itself a 13% drop compared to 2019.

Hardware

Hardware continued to decline overall in December, dropping 17% compared to the year before. The segment made $973 million during December, and $3.9 billion in 2019 overall. The only console that managed any gains was Nintendo Switch, becoming the de facto top-seller (dollar sales) in December.

Switch is also 2019's best-selling console. PS4, on the other hand, was the best-selling console of the decade.

Software

Likewise, software sales also saw a decline in December, by 13%. It was still enough to make $1.1 billion, or $6.6 billion for the entire year. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare was December's best-selling game (dollar sales) for three months running.

Modern Warfare is also the year's best-selling game, now 11 years in-a-row. The series is so massive, in fact, that ten out of 15 best-selling games in the past decade have been Call of Duty games.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order came in at number two in December, and ranked at number six overall this year in dollar sales. Nintendo games did pretty well in 2019, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe both ranking in the top ten.