Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Call Of Duty: WWII And Star Wars: Battlefront II Win December U.S. Sales
In December's video game sales, brand recognition ruled the roost as a lot of familiar faces lined up the top ten sales, according to the NPD Group.
November and December are the Superbowl of video game sales in the United States with a rather large piece of yearly software coming just from those two months. This year, Call of Duty: WWII continued its surprising dominance over the year's sales with a strong first place showing, followed closely by Star Wars: Battlefront II.
In November, Activision was quick to point out that Call of Duty had not only topped the charts in November, it topped the charts for all games released in 2017 period. That momentum has not abated and Call of Duty: WWII is officially the best selling game of 2017. In terms of December sales, Battlefront II came in second, showing that the Star Wars brand vastly overcomes the controversy surrounding the game. Super Mario Odyssey rounds out the top three, moving up several places from its November placement.
PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds on the Xbox One is the highest ranked new IP of the month, with Microsoft recently reporting a milestone of three million players on Xbox One version.
You can check out the top 20 below.
| Call of Duty: WWII | 1 | |
| Star Wars: Battlefront II 2017 | 2 | |
| Super Mario Odyssey | 3 | |
| NBA 2K18 | 4 | |
| Mario Kart 8 | 5 | |
| Madden NFL 18 | 6 | |
| Playerunknown's Battlegrounds | 7 | |
| Assassin's Creed: Origins | 8 | |
| The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | 9 | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 10 | |
| FIFA 18 | 11 | |
| Destiny 2 | 12 | |
| Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2 | 13 | |
| Splatoon 2 | 14 | |
| Need for Speed: Payback | 15 | |
| Xenoblade Chronicles 2 | 16 | |
| Just Dance 2018 | 17 | |
| The Sims 4 | 18 | |
| Pokemon: Ultra Sun | 19 | |
| Pokemon: Ultra Moon | 20 |
Additionally, we can also show the top 10 games for all of 2017, since the calendar year has ended.
| Call of Duty: WWII | 1 | |
| NBA 2K18 | 2 | |
| Destiny 2 | 3 | |
| Madden NFL 18 | 4 | |
| The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild | 5 | |
| Grand Theft Auto V | 6 | |
| Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands | 7 | |
| Star Wars: Battlefront II 2017 | 8 | |
| Super Mario Odyssey | 9 | |
| Mario Kart 8 | 10 |
In terms of hardware, Nintendo took command of the month mostly on the back of strong Switch sales, but it was not enough to overcome Sony's hardware dominance, which took the year overall. The two months before the Switch came out obviously favored the PlayStation 4, as well as the scattered other months where Sony won the numbers game. Based on a tweet from Xbox marketing head Aaron Greenberg, we know the Xbox platform outsold the PS4 in December, as well.
The 3DS also did remarkably well in December, selling 27 percent more than the little handheld did in the previous December.
Our Take
Overall, it was a good month for sales in terms of raw revenue, as December 2016 had analysts worried that the industry was cooling down overall. The growth this year is encouraging. Nintendo seems bullish on 2018 being able to match the previous year and Sony really has nothing to worry about. Microsoft's objective for 2018 is to really show the world what the Xbox One X can do after strong launch months, so hopefully they're ready to do just that.
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
