It’s NPD day once again folks and to kick off the new calendar year, Square Enix has won itself the month of January in the realm of software sales.
As revealed this morning by the NPD Group,Kingdom Hearts 3was January’s best-selling game of the month here in the United States. NPD says this is the first time that a game in theKingdom Heartsfranchise has topped the charts since April 2006 following the release ofKingdom Hearts 2. In the process,KH3also set a new record for launch month sales for the franchise making 2.5x more thanKH2when it released. This information combined with the fact that we already knowKingdom Hearts 3has shipped 5 million copies worldwideseems to indicate that the final chapter of the Dark Seeker saga is off to a very strong start.
Following closely behindKH3this month was Capcom’sResident Evil 2. The remake ofRE2made nearly three times more money than that of the original game, which launched back in January of 1998. Even though it wasn’t the month’s top-seller, Capcom has to be pleased with the game’s sales so far.
As for other notable software mentions this month, Nintendo’sNew Super Mario Bros. U Deluxewas the third best-selling game of January and had roughly 30% more made in dollar sales compared to the original game’s launch on Wii U.Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknownalso debuted in January and somewhat appropriately came in at the seven spot.AC7also set a new launch month record in terms of dollar sales which were 80% higher than that of the previous record holder,Ace Combat 6: Fire of Liberation.
You can check out the full top-20 list for last month in the following image.
On the hardware front, Nintendo Switch was January’s best-seller in terms of both unit sales and dollars made. Switch was also the only platform on the market to see year on year growth in January 2019. It seems as though it’s going to be a strong year for Nintendo and the Switch and this start in January is surely getting them off on the right foot.
If you’d like to see The NPD Group’s own Mat Piscatella run over this month’s numbers in further detail, you can check out the video below.
