Top Ten Best-Selling Games in the US for January 2016

The NPD Group today released its monthly sales report for January 2016, offering a look at the best-selling new, physical games at retail in the United States last month. Call of Duty: Black Ops III--which topped the NPD's charts not only for November and December, but also the entirety of 2015--continues to go strong, taking the number one spot.

As in November and December, Black Ops III continues to sell better on Xbox One than on PS4 despite the larger install base of the latter and Sony's platforms now getting DLC first. However, the NPD charts don't account for games sold as part of bundles with hardware, which is how many new PS4 buyers might be getting the game.

Star Wars Battlefront fell from the number two spot in December to number four, with Grand Theft Auto V and NBA 2K16 both topping it. Rainbow Six Siege, which didn't make the top ten during its debut in December, comes in at number seven, while the remainder of the list is primarily comprised of the usual suspects like Minecraft and Madden. (Battlefront sold best on Xbox One--again, perhaps because a PS4 bundle exists--but Siege sold best on Xbox One even though there is an Xbox One bundle with the game.)

For the month, new, physical software sales accounted for $212.7 million, a 10 percent decline compared with January 2015. NPD analyst Liam Callahan attributes this in part to a lack of new games. Lego Marvel Avengers was January's biggest new release, compared with Dying Light last year, which "generated 239 percent more unit sales" than Avengers. He also points to weaker sales during the month from games that launched during the final quarter of 2015.

Most interestingly, Callahan notes that this is third consecutive January with GTA V on the list. "Astonishingly, the game has moved up in ranking placement from fifth place in January 2014, to third in January 2015, and to the second-best selling game in January 2016."

The NPD's top ten list combines sales across platforms. If it did not, the number 10 game for the month would have been Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam.

Nintendo also added in a statement that "sales of Nintendo’s amiibo figures continued on a solid pace in January, with more than half a million figures sold in the United States, according to the NPD Group, which tracks U.S. video game sales. Sales of amiibo jumped 36 percent compared to January 2015. That was enough to push the total number of amiibo sold in the U.S. to more than 12 million since they launched in November 2014."

And the developer also noted strong continuing sales for Super Smash Bros. with "more than 36,000" sales of the Nintendo 3DS version, bringing lifetime sales of the title to "more than 3 million." The Wii U version has sold "more than 2.3 million" according to Nintendo.

The full list of games follows below. The order of platforms in parentheses indicates the systems it sold most to least on.

Best-Selling Physical Games in US for January 2016:

1. Call of Duty: Black Ops III (XBO, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)
2. Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3, PC)
3. NBA 2K16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
4. Star Wars Battlefront 2015 (XBO, PS4, PC)
5. Fallout 4 (PS4, XBO, PC)
6. Minecraft (360, XBO, PS4, PS3)
7. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege (XBO, PS4, PC)
8. Madden NFL 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)
9. Lego Marvel Avengers (PS4, XBO, 360, NWU, PS3, 3DS, PSV)
10. FIFA 16 (PS4, XBO, 360, PS3)