NPD Reveals List of Top Selling Games in US Annually Since 1995

The NPD Group often reveals some interesting sales stats about video game software and hardware in the United States. And recently, Mat Piscatella, an analyst at the NPD Group, took to his Twitter to drop another interesting snippet on us all—the list of every single best selling game annually for every year from 1995 to 2017 in the United States.

The full list can be viewed below, and it’s interesting. 1996-2000 saw Nintendo games right at the top, in spite of PlayStation’s absolute domination, but things took a turn in the new millennium, and most of the top selling games have been from one of three franchises: Madden NFL, Grand Theft Auto, or, most prolifically, Call of Duty.

Eight of the 23 games are Call of Duty, meaning more than a third of the list is dominated by the franchise. We have three Madden games and two GTA games as well. Since 2009, Call of Duty has been the top selling game in the country every year except for in 2013, when GTA 5 trounced Call of Duty: Ghosts pretty handily.

You can check out this list below. I wonder what it will look like once the data for this year’s sales is in? Will Call of Duty take the top spot, as many analysts predict? Or will it be claimed by Red Dead Redemption 2 instead?

Here are the best-selling Video Games in the U.S. by year, 1995-2017. Physical & Digital (for members of DLP) Full Game dollar sales (no DLC/MTX). There is quite a bit to unpack here, isn't there. Source: The NPD Group pic.twitter.com/7ykbu8kJS9

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) November 7, 2018