Madden, Saints Row fails to prevent August revenues dipping 5% to $4.10 billion | US Monthly Charts

US consumers spent just over $4 billion on video games products in August – a slight dip on the year before, despite a handful of big releases.

The NPD Group reported that the month was also boosted by growth in hardware sales, thanks to improved supply of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.

Here's what you need to know:

The numbers

August 2022

Total spending: $4.10 billion, down 5% year-on-year
Software: $3.6 billion, down 6%
Hardware: $375 million, up 14%

Year-to-date

Total spending: $34.6 billion, down 9%
Software: $30.4 billion, down 10%
Hardware: $2.9 billion, down 4%

The highlights

While that $4.10 billion is down on August 2021, NPD said it was slightly higher than the $4.07 billion seen in 2020. Similarly, year-to-date spending is 3% higher than at the same point in 2020, when it reached $33.5 billion.

Hardware was the only category not to see year-on-year decline; as mentioned, this was due to improved supply of the newest consoles, which both experienced double digit growth when compared to the same time last year.

PlayStation 5 was the biggest selling platform last month in terms of both units and dollar sales. It's also generated the most dollars year-to-date, although Switch has sold more units.

Meanwhile, EA's Madden NFL 23 was unsurprisingly the biggest selling game of the month – the 23rd year in a row that the latest Madden has achieved this – and is already the fifth best-selling game of 2022.

Saints Row was the second biggest – not bad, considering it had only been on sale for three days before NPD stopped collecting data – while the PC version of Marvel's Spider-Man boosted that title 81 places to No.3.

Spider-Man was one of two software highlights for Sony, with Horizon: Forbidden West becoming the fourth best-selling game of the year so far, thanks partly to price promotion.

Spending on mobile games, which is factored into total software spending, fell 10% year-on-year according to Sensor Tower data. Google Play users were the biggest source of decline, with their spending down 22% year-on-year compared to iOS' 1.2% dip.

Spending on accessories fell 18% to £138 million due to a big drop in controller and headset sales. Year-to-date spending in this category is down 14% to $1.4 billion.

Here are the US Top 20 (based on dollar sales) for the period between 7/31/2022 through 8/26/2022, courtesy of The NPD Group:

* Digital sales not included.
~ Xbox and Switch digital sales not included.
^ Founder's Pack Edition sales only