November 2016 NPD: Nintendo Had A Great Month
Despite not having any major Wii U holiday releases this year (although Paper Mario: Color Splash is totally worth purchasing), Nintendo has managed to light up the sales charts.
Pokémon Sun and Moon were some of the best selling games of November. If you combine their sales they take the #1 spot, but the NPD separates the games, so they took the #3 and #4 spots respectively. NPD doesn’t have the digital sales information for those titles, so it’s only counting the physical retail releases.
The full top 10 selling games (based on retail prices, not units sold) from October 30 through November 26 were:
- Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
- Battlefield 1
- Pokémon Sun*
- Pokémon Moon*
- Titanfall 2
- NBA 2K17
- Madden NFL 17
- Watch Dogs 2
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim*
- FIFA 17
*Digital sales excluded from these games.
Partly because of the price cut of the 2DS to $79.99 and mostly because of the Pokémon fever hitting the nation, the 3DS family of systems is virtually sold out across the country. Most retailers are receiving shipments all the time, but that doesn’t seem to matter as they are often selling them as soon as they hit the store shelves. Online retailers have been having difficult keeping the handhelds in stock, especially the budget-priced 2DS. So, it’s no surprise to hear that for November the 3DS hardware sales were up 59% over the same period last year, and it’s the sixth month in a row of year-on-year growth.
Let’s not forget that Nintendo had one other piece of highly coveted hardware up for sale in November. The NES Classic Edition mini-console has been difficult to find since it released. It’s safe to say that Nintendo has sold every single one it’s shipped so far. That’s why it’s a little surprising to see that only 196,000 were sold last month. Compare that to Japan where over 300,000 Famicom minis were sold and it’s beyond obvious that Nintendo of America severely under shipped these systems. We will probably never know the real reasoning behind this decision, but let’s hope they learn how to read supply and demand in the marketplace soon. They’ve only had 30 years to figure it out.
[Source: Venturebeat]
Craig has been covering the video game industry since 1995. His work has been published across a wide spectrum of media sites. He’s currently the Editor-In-Chief of Nintendo Times and contributes to Gaming Age.
