While the PlayStation 4 has routinely been the best-selling console in the United States since its launch, that was not the case in October 2015. Instead, it was the Xbox One.
The NPD Group today released its monthly report for new, physical sales in the US during October. While the report itself no longer includes specific sales figures for specific hardware, Microsoft said in a statement that the Xbox One came out on top–an impressive feat considering the PS4 dropped its price for the first time in October, bringing it in line with the cheapest Xbox One at $350.
“The strength of the greatest games lineup in Xbox history drove record Xbox Live usage for October and made Xbox One the best-selling console in the U.S. with 81 percent growth compared to October 2014,” Xbox marketing corporate VP Mike Nichols said in a statement shared with GameSpot.
This could be gleaned from Sony’s statement, which failed to highlight that the PS4 had been number one, as it normally would. “We are truly humbled by the success of the PlayStation 4 and look forward to celebrating with our fans at PlayStation Experience in December,” a Sony spokesperson told GameSpot. “Thank you to our community for making PlayStation 4 the top selling console globally.”
Nintendo didn’t discuss the performance of its hardware, but did highlight a few other areas of its business. Amiibo sales topped 9 million in the US, thanks to more than 800,000 Amiibo figures and cards being sold during October. Wii U software sales were up 40 percent year-over-year, and are up 20 percent when comparing the first ten months of 2015 with the same period during 2014.
Overall console sales were down very slightly during the month when compared with last year, dipping to $270.3 million from $271.1 million. This is due in large part to portables, which saw sales drop 27 percent. Console sales were up 3 percent.
“This was due entirely to 8th generation console hardware sales, which rose by 12 percent to offset the 66 percent decrease in hardware sales for 7th generation consoles,” NPD analyst Liam Callahan said.
A whopping 96 percent of hardware sales came in the form of bundles. That’s nearly double the amount in October 2014, when bundles represented only 53 percent of sales.
On the software side, Halo 5: Guardians came out on top, followed by NBA 2K16.