Its almost the end of the year, and so far, it seems like a really good one for Nintendo. Pokémon Go seems to have renewed the public’s interest in the franchise, because according to the US sales charts for November the combined sales of Pokémon Sun and Moon have beat Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare. It should be noted that the NPD Group, the market research company that tracks the US charts, no longer makes proper sales charts public, and organizes their top 10 by revenue generated, not by copies sold. Also, they were not provided with the digital sales data for Pokémon Sun and Moon.
Even without taking digital sales into account, though, NPD was still able to confirm that Pokémon Sun and Moon were the best-selling games of the month–when combined, at least. Either way, it was still a major milestone for Pokémon, as the NPD’s Sam Naji said Pokémon Sun and Moon had the “strongest launch in the history of the franchise,” selling 8% more units than the previous record holder, Pokémon Black and White. What makes this all the more impressive is that the game didn’t go on sale until November 18th, more than halfway through the month.
When looking at the games individually on the list, though, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare technically comes in first, a fact that Activision was very quick to point out. Shortly after the release of the November US sales chart, Activision sent out press release in which they called Infinite Warfare the top-selling game in North America for the entire year, and the 8th year in a row for Call of Duty. While Infinite Warfare did technically come in first place, overall sales were much lower when compared to Black Ops 3 last year, by nearly 50%, according to report by the NPD.
As for the rest of the games on the list, Battlefield 1 is at a strong second place after dominating October’s charts, followed by Pokémon Sun and Moon, individually ranking at third and fourth place respectively. Titanfall 2 gets a boost from the previous month’s ninth place to fifth this month. Watch Dogs 2, having suffered a very weak release, ends up in eighth place, trailing behind previously released sports games NBA 2K17 and Madden NFL 17.