The data for video game software and hardware sales in the United States across all of July 2020 is in, courtesy of The NPD Group (via GamesBeat), and was the case last month – and has been for a number of months running, in fact – the Nintendo Switch was once again the highest selling console in the region for the month, in both unit and dollar sales. It is also the highest selling platform of the year so far.
The PS4 and Xbox One had both been enjoying resurgences of sorts in recent months, with sales being driven up due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it seems that boost is now fading away, with sales for both consoles now dropping. Given how close we are to the successors for both machines coming out, that’s not a surprise. It’s a surprise, in fact, that the two had been selling as well over the last few months as they had been.
The Switch, on the other hand, is moving from strength to strength in terms of sales, in spite of what has arguably been a weak year for the console as far as major new releases are concerned. A lot of that is probably down to Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Just recently, in fact, Nintendo announced that the Switch’s lifetime worldwide sales had hit 61.44 million as of June 30 of this year.
All in all, hardware spending in the US across July stood at $166 million, down 2% from July 2019. Meanwhile, year-to-date hardware spending stands at $1.8 billion, which is up 22% year-on-year.