The NPD Group has unveiled how well video games fared during the month of February in the United States. Overall, the video game industry reached $1 billion during the month, up 4% from this time last year. February was quite crowded with plenty of big, new releases from some of the biggest developers. Coming out on top as the month’s best selling game was BioWare’s long awaited new IP, Anthem.
Despite facing numerous issues after it launched, BioWare’s return with Anthem dominated the month, and is now the second best selling game of the year. The game was able to achieve the top spot of best selling game despite PC digital sales for the game not being tracked by the NPD Group. It even hit the studio’s second best launch month sales only behind 2012’s Mass Effect 3. Placing second was the newest anime crossover fighting game, Jump Force. Though it also had issues at launch, the game did so well that it became the fourth best selling game of the year. “Launch month sales volume” of the game was the third highest for a title in publisher Bandai Namco’s history.
Elsewhere on the chart, January’s best selling game, Kingdom Hearts III, finished in third place behind the two aforementioned new titles. The long anticipated game is still doing extremely well as it’s still the best selling game of the year, and is still the fastest selling title in the series. The newest entry in the Far Cry series, Far Cry: New Dawn, landed fourth on the list. Last year’s best selling game, Red Dead Redemption II, placed fifth on the list. 4A Game’s newest game, Metro: Exodus, came in at the eight spot as it set a new launch month sales record by beating out Metro: Last Light‘s numbers by “nearly 50 percent.”
Below are the top ten best selling games during the month of February:
- Anthem
- Jump Force
- Kingdom Hearts III
- Far Cry: New Dawn
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Resident Evil 2
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Metro: Exodus
- NBA 2k19
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
On the hardware side of things, the Nintendo Switch continued its dominance coming in as the best selling console of February as well as for the entire year. Nintendo did so well that Switch sales helped the company achieve its “highest year-to-date dollar sales for Nintendo produced hardware since 2011.” Though the Switch is doing well, overall hardware spending is down 12% compared to last year as this console generation appears to near its end.