A Special Year for Video Games (Premium)

The NPD Group has published some interesting data about the performance of the video game industry in 2017. There's a lot of good news here.

One asterisk: NPD covers only the United States.

"2017 was a special year for the industry, and for everyone who loves games," NPD video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella says. "Developers created content that delighted gamers across all gaming platforms. From mobile to PC, and from console to virtual reality, growth was achieved because the passion of gamers was matched only by the talent of game makers."

So here's some data from the firm, and some commentary.

Nintendo won the holidays. The Nintendo Switch was the best-selling video game console in December, with 1.5 million units sold. But it wasn't just the holidays: Nintendo has sold almost 5 million Switch consoles in the US since its launch in March, making it the fastest-selling home console in U.S. history. Console sales were up 27 percent this year, but that was mostly due to the Switch.

Xbox One beat PS4 over the holidays. OK, Nintendo was number one, but here's a surprise: Xbox One (all versions) outsold the PlayStation 4 (all versions) during the same five-week December selling period. Sony says that it sold 5.9 million PS4s over the holidays (which I assume covers both November and December), and it hit almost 74 million units overall by the end of the year. Regardless, both Xbox One and PS4 saw record-setting sales over the holidays, according to NPD, with "the combined hardware installed base of the PS4 and Xbox One now exceeding that of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 by 18 percent, and that of the PlayStation 2 and Xbox by 4 percent" (during similar time frames).

Call of Duty: WWII was the best-selling game of the year. Despite being on sale only for the final seven weeks of the year, Call of Duty: WII was the best-selling video game of the year across all platforms. To be clear, this isn't unusual: Every COD game dating back to Modern Warfare has been the best-selling video game of the year, even the more recent disappointing titles. That is eight straight years.

Xbox One and PS4 have the same number of games in the top 10 list. If you look at NPD's list of the top 10 best-selling games of 2017, you will see something interesting: Both the Xbox One and the PS4 are identically represented. That is, 7 of the top 10 games are all available on both consoles. This speaks, I think, to the lie that Xbox One doesn't have "enough good games," and the misunderstanding over console exclusives. What Xbox One has is the games that people want to play. And, shocker, those games look better on the Xbox One X than they do on Sony's PS4 Pro. This is important.

Three of the top 10 games are Switch exclusives. As impressive, three of the top 10 games of the year---The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are only available on Nintendo Switch. Nintendo is a decade away from the late...