It looks like Nintendo’s Animal Crossing: New Horizons has beat out a lot of games when it comes to the latest chart that the U.S. NPD Group released for the wild to read over. This means the recently released title has beat out Capcom’s controversial Resident Evil 3 Remake, as well as other titles as of March 2020.
The website that houses Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat, has posted up results from the U.S. NPD Groups’ data, which reveals consumers in the U.S. have spent $1.597 billion (rounded to $1.6 billion) on gaming hardware, new games, accessories, and game cards as of March.
The above website — which you can access through the following archive link — reveals that this is the most March money the industry has generated recently, where the last noteworthy numbers from the NPD Group’s reporting see $1.8 billion accrued in 2008.
With that said, here are the official numbers for March 2019 and March 2020:
| March 2020 Dollar Sales | March 2019 | March 2020 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Video Game Sales | $1,186 million | $1,597 million | 35% |
| Video Game Hardware | $282 million | $461 million | 63% |
| Video Game Software (Physical and Full Game Digital Formats from the Nintendo eShop, PlayStation, STEAM and Xbox platforms for DLP Participants) | $550 million | $739 million | 34% |
| Video Game Accessories and Game Cards | $354 million | $397 million | 12% |
Although I’m not fond of him or his SJW ways, U.S. NPD Groups’ analyst Mat Piscatella offers his take on the above numbers:
“March 2020 tracked spending across video game hardware, software, and accessories and game cards totaled $1.6 billion, gaining 35% when compared to a year ago. Year-to-date 2020 tracked spending across video game hardware, software, and accessories and game cards totaled $3 billion, declining 4 percent when compared to a year ago.”
Before proceeding onward, I should note that the U.S. NPD Group tracks physical sales at retailers as well as digital data directly from publishers. Like always, there’s a catch. Some companies like Nintendo or Activision Blizzard do not share first-party digital numbers.
As a heads-up, I should note that the asterisk (*) stands for “digital downloads not included.” In other words, only physical sales are counted in this case when you see said symbol:
| Number Placement | Games |
|---|---|
| 1 | Animal Crossing: New Horizons* |
| 2 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare |
| 3 | MLB: The Show 20 |
| 4 | Resident Evil 3 Remake |
| 5 | NBA 2K20 |
| 6 | Doom Eternal* |
| 7 | Persona 5: Royal |
| 8 | Grand Theft Auto V |
| 9 | Borderlands 3 |
| 10 | Mario Kart 8: Deluxe* |
| 11 | Nioh 2 |
| 12 | Red Dead Redemption 2 |
| 13 | FIFA 20 |
| 14 | Super Smash Bros. Ultimate* |
| 15 | Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team DX* |
| 16 | Madden NFL 20 |
| 17 | Just Dance 2020 |
| 18 | Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order |
| 19 | Mortal Kombat 11 |
| 20 | Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered |
One last thing before concluding, the above chart does not include microtransactions or subscriptions, but only physical sales and digital downloads.
And that’s all the news that’s fit to print.