Avengers assembles September sales chart heavy on new releases

September saw the best-selling charts under siege, as the NPD Group's monthly US sales report today showed new releases accounting for seven of the month's top 11 best-selling games as hardware, software, and accessory sales rose across the board.

The best selling game of the month was Square Enix's long-awaited Marvel's Avengers, which posted the second highest launch month dollar sales for a super hero game ever, coming in behind only Spider-Man on the PS4.

Super Mario 3D All-Stars coming in second based on the strength of its physical sales alone, as Nintendo does not provide the NPD Group with its digital sales figures. It also posted the sixth-highest launch month dollar sales for a Nintendo game.

Other new releases in the top 10 included Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, NBA 2K21 (physical sales only), Crusader Kings III, and Star Wars: Squadrons.

Tony Hawk and Crusader Kings saw the best launch month sales in their franchises' histories, with Crusader Kings III already becoming the best-selling game in that franchise based on a single month of sales.

Overall video game content sales for Sseptember were up 10% year-over-year to $4.31 billion. That number includes retail sales, digital full-game and add-on/microtransaction sales from participating publishers, subscription spending, and spending on mobile provided to NPD by Sensor Tower.

Breaking that number down by category showed the industry saw gains across the board.

Gaming software, add-ons and subscriptions were up 8% to $3.84 billion, while game hardware sales were up 15% year-over-year to $277 million.

Nintendo Switch was the best-selling hardware of the month, with its sales growth was enough to offset declines in the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Game accessories saw the largest jump of the month, relatively speaking, up 30% year-over-year to $191 million, with gamepads and headset spending setting records for September.

Year-to-date, the industry has performed well during the pandemic, with US spending on games reaching $33.69 billion, up 21% year-over-year.

Here are the US Top 20 (based on dollar sales) for the period between August 30 and October 3, 2020, courtesy of The NPD Group:

*Digital sales not included