Gearing Up For One Heck of a Winning Streak
According to the NPD Groups, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was January’s best-selling game in the US–a position which it has held for several months now. And that particular achievement, while notable, is only scraping the surface of the game’s accomplishments. Mat Piscatella, Executive Director & Video Game Industry Advisor of The NPD Group, stated on Twitter that Black Ops Cold War had “been the best-selling game in the U.S. each month since its November launch, and it now ranks as the 20th best-selling video game in U.S. tracked history.”
US NPD SW – Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War was January’s best-selling game. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has been the best-selling game in the U.S. each month since its November launch, and it now ranks as the 20th best-selling video game in U.S. tracked history.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) February 12, 2021
Congratulations, Black Ops Cold War! You’re just ahead of Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, which was the second best-selling game of January and is now also the second fastest-selling installment of the Assassin’s Creed franchise in the US, surpassed only by Assassin’s Creed III. Animal Crossing: New Horizons ranked fifth best-selling title for January, which marks the first time it’s broken into the top five since July 2020–at least, in the US. It’s had a much stronger reign in the UK. At least New Horizons remains the best-selling Nintendo Switch title of the month. Way to go, you cute little animal villagers. We believe you can reclaim the top spot. Just bat your eyes, grab a fishing pole, and try not to get sidetracked by all those fishy silhouettes in the water when you’re trying to do something else.
When it comes to hardware, the numbers get a bit harder to track. Piscatella started by saying that: “Sales of video game hardware were 144% higher than January 2020, reaching $319 million. This is the highest total for a January month since the $323 million achieved in January 2011.” He went on to note that the Nintendo Switch sold the most units while the PS5 made the most money, with the highest dollar sales total for any January since the Nintendo Wii in January 2009. Not bad for any of the companies involved.
What’s your favorite game of the month? Let us know down in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter or Facebook.