The NPD Group has released its report for December 2018, which also includes year to date sales charts for the US. Thanks to these charts, we know that the best selling game of 2018 in the country was Red Dead Redemption 2. This marks the first time since 2013 that a Call of Duty game was not the best selling game of the year—when, ironically, Call of Duty: Ghosts got ousted by Grand Theft Auto V.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which launched in December (and topped software charts for the month) ended up shooting its way all the way to number 5 on the year end charts, ahead of games such as God of War and Spider-Man. As a reminder, it did this without any digital sales being tracked for it (where they are in at least some capacity for most other games on the software charts).
“Annual dollar sales of tracked console, portable, and PC video game software reached $7.1 billion in 2018, growing 7 percent when compared to 2017,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella told VentureBeat. “This is the highest annual total for tracked video game software spending since the $7.5 billion generated in 2012.”
You can check out the software chart for the full year for yourself below:
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
- NBA 2K19
- Madden NFL 19
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Marvel’s Spider-Man
- Far Cry 5
- God of War 2018
- Monster Hunter: World
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Mario Kart 8
- FIFA 19
- Battlefield V
- Super Mario Odyssey
- Call of Duty: WWII
- Dragon Ball: FighterZ
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Super Mario Party
- Pokemon: Lets Go Pikachu
