Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End was one of the most highly-anticipated games of 2016, and it looks like it's living up to its expectations.
A few weeks after its launch in late April, it became clear to gaming sites everywhere that the general reception of Uncharted would be nothing but exceptional, as it received praise from both critics and gamers alike.
Even the one negative review the game got did no such harm to the game’s success, and instead, it spiked a petition from Uncharted fans. This positive response set a new record for Sony, “making it the fastest-selling PlayStation 4 first-party title of all time.”
In a recent report, the NPD Group’s market analysis of last month’s physical game sales mark Uncharted 4 as the top-selling game for May, followed by Bethesda Softworks' Doom and Blizzard’s Overwatch.
Despite the games’ releases falling in the month of May, which some reports allude to as the month “where [all] things come to die,” Uncharted, Doom and Overwatch stood their ground, as did even other titles like Battleborn and Homefront: The Revolution.
A total of $528.6 million dollars was spent on game-related physical products, which saw a four percent increase from last year’s $509.3 million sales in May. This increase is also a welcome change from April’s 15 percent decrease in sales compared with April 2015.
The NPD also recognizes that the quality found in the latest game releases kept the software market up with a total of $241.9 million spent by consumers, an increase of 18 percent from last year’s $204.7 million.
Liam Callaham, an NPD analyst, notes that the latest game releases were the “major driver of growth” from the past year.
“Collectively, May 2016 new launches sold nearly double in unit sales and 108 percent more in dollars as new launches last May. These May 2016 launches represented 51 percent of overall new physical software sales for the month,” he details.
The same can't be said for hardware and accessories, though, as both markets saw a decrease in sales from last year. $137.7 million was estimated from hardware sales, a 10 percent decrease from last year’s $153.1 million, and $149 million estimated in accessories with a two percent decrease from $151.5 million last year.
Callaham explains that the decrease in hardware sales majorly stems from the decline of portables with a $7.3 million decrease, while last-gen hardware is at a $5 million decrease. Current-gen consoles are at a stable rate but a decline of two percent in “dollar sales” has been caused “due to a decrease in average [market] price.”
