April 2022 NPD: Hardware bounces back and Lego Star Wars tops sales chart

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It was a big month for console hardware sales in the United States due to increasing supply, according to industry-tracking firm The NPD Group. That led to year-over-year growth in that category. But the industry overall was down due to slower game content sales. That is likely due to less interest in games like Call of Duty: Vanguard. Here are the full results for the month:

“April 2022 consumer spending across video game hardware, content and accessories declined 8% when compared to a year ago, to $4.3 billion,” NPD analyst Mat Piscatella said. “Hardware gains were unable to offset declines in content and accessories spending. Year-to-date 2022 spending was also 8% lower than the same period a year ago, to $18.3 billion.”

Let’s get to the software sales.

NPD tracks physical sales at retailers, but it also gets digital data directly from publishers. Not every company participates. For example, Nintendo doesn’t share its first-party sales, and Activision Blizzard does not provide its Battle.net sales.

These charts are sorted by dollar sales — not number of units sold. And this is for full-game sales and does not include in-game spending. 

WORDS

Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is an immediate smash hit in the United States.

“LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was the best-selling game of April 2022, while also debuting as the No. 2 best-selling game of 2022 year to date,” said Piscatella. “LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga was the best-selling game of the month across Nintendo, PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam platforms.”

The pent up demand for The Skywalker Saga enabled the game to set a record for the long-running