A flood of information came out from The NPD Group earlier today when the company revealed its sales report for December 2018, along with year-in-general numbers. Nintendo had no trouble finding its spot on these charts with both the Switch and several of its games.
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Based on the report, not only did the Nintendo Switch rule December, but it was deemed the best-selling console for the year in terms of both units and dollars, shuffling millions to consumers and creating a nice reverse course from how the company performed with the Wii U. More specific sales numbers should be provided by the publisher over the next few weeks.
What’s crazy is how the PlayStation 4 managed to outperform the Switch in general sales over several months, but still had enough of a spectacular December to beat it in overall sales numbers for 2018.
The NPD Group’s Mat Piscatella, also shared this bit of information, which compares the Switch’s performance to that of the Wii:
US NPD HW – Nintendo Switch generated the highest December month hardware dollar sales for a single platform since the Nintendo Wii in December 2009, and achieved the highest December unit sales for a single platform since December 2010.
— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) January 22, 2019
If Nintendo continues to hold its course, 2019 could be a huge year for the Switch, especially with big titles like Animal Crossing and Metroid Prime 4 on the way.
The report also talked about the performance of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which managed to land in the top-ten best selling games for 2018 within a single month. Although exact sales numbers are still being nailed down, the report indicates that it cleared 2.7 million copies in the U.S. by itself, and 5 million copies in all, including digital versions. Combined with sales from the U.K. and Japan, that could put it on par for clearing 10 million copies sold overall. That means the previous best-seller, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which sold 13 million copies, could be topped within a matter of weeks. Perhaps it’ll be sooner, depending on when Persona 5‘s Joker is set to debut in the game, as well as who else is coming via downloadable content. (Four more spots have yet to be revealed.)
Not to mention the popularity of other games. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe continued to be a best-seller, despite the fact that it’s well over a year old for the platform. Both Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were top-notch sellers as well. And that’s not even getting into the success of the Pokemon: Let’s Go releases, which sold millions of copies over the past couple of months.
We’ll see how the company does in the year ahead, but Nintendo isn’t messing around anymore. It’s set to take over the game industry- again– in its own special way.
What do you think of Nintendo’s performance in 2018? Reach out to me on Twitter at @TheDCD!
