These Were November 2020's Best-Selling Games
November was a busy month for the gaming industry, and now market research company the NPD Group has released its list for the month's best-selling video games. The list covers a variety of released titles and the approximate sales tracked from retailers and digital store sales in the U.S.
The NPD Group's Mat Piscatella displayed the figures for the month of November on Twitter. Beating out several other high-profile launches was Call of Duty: Black Ops – Cold War, which topped the list at number one. The game, published by Activision, comes from a fan-favorite franchise, which likely accounts for its massive sales success. According to Piscatella, "This is the 13th consecutive year a Call of Duty game has ranked as the best-selling game of its release month." Each Call of Duty video game that has released in the past has generally resulted in the game topping the charts during its month of launch. The last time that was not the case was in 2007, when it was overshadowed by Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock — a separate Activision product.
In third place, shortly behind Assassin's Creed: Valhalla, was the PlayStation exclusive, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales. This Marvel video game was released in conjunction with the PlayStation 5, which could explain the game's incredible popularity. Piscatella also noted that "the launch month sales [for Miles Morales] were the second highest amongst superhero games on PlayStation platforms in U.S. history, trailing only Marvel's Spider-Man."
The fourth and fifth place spots were taken by some of the biggest sports franchises in the business, with Madden NFL 21 at number four, and NBA 2K21 at number five. Sports have always had a place in the video game industry, but with a pandemic raging on, this has been a great way to still be able to get some football and basketball action. It should be noted that although Nintendo didn't break into the top five games of November, the company still dominated and claimed eight of the top twenty entries on the list.
November saw a bit of a shakeup with the introduction of new generation consoles. It will be interesting to see the progression of sales as more exclusive titles are released. It seems as though business is still booming for the video game industry, despite the ongoing pandemic. Nintendo may currently be dominating the market overall, but gamers will just have to wait and see how the next-gen consoles will impact the charts.