Following a busy holiday season filled with new releases, January is typically seen as a bit of a "slower" time of the year for new game releases, with the last month's results from game sales tracker The NPD Group posting their list of the top selling titles for January 2016, which is largely dominated by many familiar faces.
The NPD Group released their full statistics and chart for January 2016, with the top 10-selling physical releases for January 2016 listed below (platform listings for each title are ordered by top-selling platform):
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
- Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC)
- NBA 2K16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
- Star Wars Battlefront 2015 (XBO, PS4, PC)
- Fallout 4 (PS4, XBO, PC)
- Minecraft (360, XBO, PS4, PS3)
- Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (XBO, PS4, PC)
- Madden NFL 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
- Lego Marvel Avengers (PS4, XBO, 360, NWU, PS3, 3DS, PSV)
- FIFA 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
Following its dominance for overall game sales in 2015, Call of Duty: Black Ops III once again took the crown for the top game sales of January 2016 with Xbox One as its top selling platform, while several regulars like Grand Theft Auto V, Minecraft, and the EA Sports franchises all took a place on the charts.
The one new release to chart for the month was LEGO Marvel's Avengers - in one note however, The NPD Group explained that if the chart were organized purely by the highest-selling SKU (rather than combined platform sales), last month's Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam for 3DS would have charted at #10.
Overall, The NPD Group explained that consumers spent $605.2 million on gaming products at retailers in January, marking a 4% decrease from the same time last year ($627.6 million in January 2015). Hardware sales also accounted for $157 million in January, marking a 15% decrease from $185.4 million in the same period last year.
NPD analyst Liam Callahan explained in a statement on hardware sales:
“Recently, hardware declines typically were a result of [Xbox 360 and PS3] generation console and portable declines exceeding growth in [the current] generation hardware sales."
"In January 2016, however, the sales of [current] generation consoles declined by 8 percent, despite relatively flat unit sales, as average prices dipped by 6 percent as a result of price cuts that took place between January 2015 and January 2016.”
The NPD's results also shared an 81% drop-off in sales for previous generation of platforms with the Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii, while sales of the 3DS and PlayStation Vita have marked a 21% decline. In terms of software, physical game sales accounted for $212.7 million, seeing a 10% decrease year-over-year from $235.6 million.
The one segment that The NPD Group noted growth in were the sales of peripherals including NFC figurines, such as Nintendo's amiibo line and those for other titles like Skylanders and Disney Infinity. Growth for that market saw a 15% increase to $235.5 million in 2016, up from $206 million in 2015.