NPD Group‘s Mat Piscatella has revealed that the PlayStation 5 was January 2021’s best-selling platform in the United States in terms of dollar sales. The console broke a 12-year-old record, set by the Nintendo Wii in 2019, by posting the highest dollar sales total for a January month.
However, it was the Nintendo Switch that sold the most units during the period. According to Piscatella, Switch’s unit sales were “the highest of any platform in a January month since the Nintendo Wii in January 2010.” Overall, sales of video game hardware stood at $319 million, up by 144 percent year-on-year. This is also the highest total for a January month in nearly a decade.
Consumer spending across hardware, software, and accessories reached $4.7 billion, which is a 42 percent year-on-year increase. We’ve already reported that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was unsurprisingly January’s best-selling game in the U.S. In second position is Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, which is now the second-fastest selling Assassin’s Creed game in the country’s history behind Assassin’s Creed III.
January’s top 20 titles are as follows:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Madden NFL 21
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Mario Kart 8: Deluxe
- Ring Fit Adventure
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- NBA 2K21
- Super Mario 3D All-Stars
- FIFA 21
- Immortals: Fenyx Rising
- Mortal Kombat 11
- Just Dance 2021
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Minecraft: PS4 Edition
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Super Mario Party
- EA Sports UFC 4
On PlayStation platforms specifically, Miles Morales outperformed Valhalla and was the second best-selling game after Black Ops Cold War.
[Source: Mat Piscatella]