Skip to main content

Even without PC sales, Overwatch was the best-selling game of June 2016 in the US

Brenna Hillier avatar
News by Brenna Hillier Contributor
Published on

Overwatch topped the sales chart of the NPD's June 2016 report despite failing to turn in a third of its homework.

overwatch_fi_2

Overwatch was the dominant force in the US games market last month, according to the NPD Group's June 2016 report.

This was the first month the NPD began to include digital sales data in its reports, and so we had all hoped to see a nice big bump. Unfortunately, while there was definite improvement over May, the figures still demonstrated a decline on June 2015.

Total industry spend down 25% year-on-year to $652.2 million. Breaking that down by sector, hardware fell 42% to $181.5 million and accessories were down 6% to $120.9 million. Software, where we would have expected the biggest increase, was down 20% to $322 million.

Not every publisher volunteered digital sales data, and the figures still likely lack a huge amount of sales from sources like DLC, mobile and subscription - not to mention the very healthy used game trade. But still: not as strong a result as we would have liked to have seen.

The NPD's Liam Callahan said the drop-off in software is down to a lack of big new releases this month, in comparison to June 2015. In June 2015, the then new release Batman: Arkham Knight racked up five times the unit and dollar sales of LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens, June 2016's top new release.

On the hardware front, for the first time the NPD noted that current-gen sales were slacking off a bit; usually any drops in hardware boil down to people not buying PS3 and Xbox 360 consoles any more. Although the PS4 and Xbox One are still outselling their precursors by 40% at 32 months, it's possible upcoming hardware iterations like Xbox One 2 and PS4 Neo have cooled consumer ardour a bit.

NPD top 10 software June 2016

Interestingly, the charts do not include digital sales data for DOOM and Uncharted; presumably Bethesda and Sony didn’t fork them over.

Overwatch sales figures do not include PC sales via Battle.net, either, but since it came top anyway it wouldn’t have made much difference.

  1. Overwatch
  2. GTA 5
  3. LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  4. DOOM
  5. Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst
  6. Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
  7. NBA 2K16
  8. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3
  9. Destiny: The Taken King
  10. Minecraft

Read this next