‘Madden NFL 19’ Dominates August Sales Numbers, Along With Classic ‘Call of Duty’ Game

August 2019 generated some interesting sales numbers for the game industry, according to the NPD. Not only did hardware and software sales alike flourish, but Madden NFL became a champ again; and an older Call of Duty game showed surprising dominance.

Based on numbers provided by VentureBeat, the NPD noted that sales numbers did very well for last month, generating $796 million on gaming-related products for the month. That’s an increase of 26 percent over the $634 million made last year.

In addition, hardware saw an increase to $214 million (up 28 percent), while PC and console software saw a 16 percent boost to $330 million.

“August 2018 spending across video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards grew 26 percent when compared to a year ago, to $796 million,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “Growth was achieved across all categories of spending.”

As of the end of August, gaming spending for 2018 has reached $7.539 billion, up from the $6.428 billion around the same time last year.

As for the best selling-games for the month, Madden NFL 19 easily showed dominance with the football crowd, though EA didn’t note any specific sell-through numbers. Monster Hunter World followed closely behind in second place, thanks to the best-selling PC version that came out; and in the following spots, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Grand Theft Auto V and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe rounded things out.

Meanwhile, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made its way onto the list for the first time in years, landing in an eighth place position after Microsoft made it available for backward compatibility on the Xbox One.

Here’s how the full top twenty pans out. Note that games with one asterisk don’t include digital sales, while games with two asterisks don’t include PC digital sales.

1. Madden NFL 19**
2. Monster Hunter: World
3. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Siege
4. Grand Theft Auto V
5. Mario Kart 8*
6. Naruto To Boruto: Shinobi Striker
7. God of War
8. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
9. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*
10. Super Mario Odyssey*
11. Minecraft
12. Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy
13. Far Cry 5
14. Monster Hunter: Generations Ultimate
15. Call of Duty: WWII
16. Mario Tennis Aces*
17. Overwatch**
18. Lego The Incredibles
19. We Happy Few*
20. The Crew 2

Next month should be interesting, to say the least. Both Spider-Man and Shadow of the Tomb Raider are poised to break sales records; and Dragon Ball FighterZ should do rather well on the Nintendo Switch front. We’ll see how numbers fare by this time in October.