Top 10 Best-Selling Games in the US for September 2016

The best-selling games of September 2016 have been revealed, thanks to the NPD Group's monthly sales report of both physical and digital sales. Sports reigned supreme last month, with NBA 2K17, Madden NFL 17, FIFA 17, and NHL 17 taking the top four spots. The NPD's top ten is ranked in terms of dollar sales, as opposed to units sold as it was in the past.

BioShock: The Collection and Destiny: The Collection lead non-sports titles at number five and six respectively. Existing owners of Destiny and all of its DLC can buy the new Rise of Iron on its own, so Destiny: The Collection making the list is impressive. Sales could have been bolstered by players upgrading to current-gen consoles, as there's no longer support for the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of Destiny.

Last month's fourth- and fifth-place games, Grand Theft Auto V and Overwatch, have moved down to the seventh and eighth positions, while Call of Duty: Black Ops III drops to tenth. It's important to note that Overwatch's Battle.net PC sales continue to be excluded from these reports.

Perhaps most worth noting is the ninth-place Forza Horizon 3, which did not have its digital sales included in this report. As one of Microsoft's Play Anywhere titles, Horizon 3 offers a bonus for buying the game digitally. If you buy a digital copy on Xbox One or PC, you can download and play it for free on the other platform. If digital sales were included, it's possible that it would have placed higher on the chart. Furthermore, Horizon 3 and FIFA 17 both released right at the end of the month, making their sales performance even more impressive.

September 2016 saw a decrease of 22 percent in software sales for console and portable devices when compared to the same period last year. $453.4 million was made in sales last month as opposed to September 2015's $581.1 million. However, PC games software sales increased by 3 percent to $19.8 million from $19.3 million.

"[September]'s new software releases--NBA 2K17, FIFA 17, NHL 17 and Forza Horizon 3--could not compete with last year's stronger slate of new games which included NBA 2K16, FIFA 16, NHL 16, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Destiny: The Taken King, Mad Max, Disney Infinity 3.0, and Super Mario Maker for the Wii U," NPD analyst Sam Naji said.

Nintendo released a statement on the NPD data, saying its first-party 3DS software increased more than 30 percent year-over-year.

On the hardware side, things look bleak as well. Hardware sales dropped 25 percent to $234.3 million from $311.7 million last year. Additionally, Xbox One outsold the PS4 in the US for the third month straight, despite the release of the PS4's newly revised, $300 slim console. However, the announcement of the more powerful, $400 PS4 Pro may have had a negative impact on the PS4 Slim's sales.