Now that the holiday period has officially ended, the NPD Group has shared information about the top-selling systems, software, and accessories of December and 2019. On the hardware front, Nintendo had another good year in the US.
The Switch was the best-selling hardware of December and finished as the best-seller of 2019. The Switch Pro Controller was also the best-selling accessory of 2019. Despite Nintendo dominating the year, Sony’s PlayStation 4 was the best-selling console of the decade and its controller – the DualShock 4 – was the best-selling accessory of the decade.
Here’s a nice graphic, breaking it all down:
Despite the success of the Switch in 2019, hardware spending in the month of December declined when compared to the sales in December 2018 and annual hardware spending also dropped. Switch gains weren’t enough to offset these declines, either:
Hardware spending in December 2019 declined 17 percent when compared to a year ago, to $973 million. Annual hardware spending fell 22 percent, to $3.9 billion. Nintendo Switch gains could not offset declines across other platforms.
Spending on “accessories and game cards” fell by 14% (down to $869 million) compared to the previous December, and annually, sales on cards and accessories dropped by 7% (down to $4.1 billion). All up, the amount spent on video game hardware, software, accessories and game cards in December 2019, was a total of $3.0 billion – 15% less compared to spending a year ago. Year over year, spending dropped by 13% (dropping to $14.5 billion).
Earlier this month, NPD industry analyst Mat Piscatella noted how the video game industry, in general, could potentially see a hardware sales decline as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One end their life cycles.