Top 20 Best-Selling Games In The US For October 2017 Revealed

Following Nintendo's initial report, The NPD Group has now released its full report for October 2017 US sales, covering games and hardware. Starting with games, Middle-earth: Shadow of War was No. 1 for the month, with Assassin's Creed: Origins, Super Mario Odyssey, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, and NBA 2K18 rounding out the top five. You can see a list of the top 20 best sellers below.

Shadow of War sales were 20 percent better than the launch month of Shadow of Mordor back in 2014, the NPD Group noted. Additionally Odyssey had the third-highest launch month for a mainline Mario game since NPD tracking began, only behind New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Super Mario Galaxy. Specific unit sales for Shadow of War--and all other games--are now shared in these NPD Group reports. If they are released at all, specific unit sales figures would more likely come directly from publishers.

Total game sales amounted to $474 million for October, which is down 20 percent compared to last year. There were a lot of HUGE games released in October this year, but the NPD Group noted it was always going to be a tough comparison given that the massively successful Battlefield 1 came out in October 2016. On a year-to-date basis, game spending is up 3 percent to $4.2 billion.

Some other software takeaways from the NPD Group report include:

Racing game sales more than doubled compared to October 2016, with overall racing game sales up 37 percent this year.
Sales of role-playing games jumped by more than 20 percent this month, and are up 43 percent year-to-date.
Destiny 2 is 2017's best-selling game to date.
NBA 2K18 is the best-selling sports game of 2017.
Ubisoft had the strongest month during October 2017 in terms of game sales, while Activision Blizzard is No. 1 for the year so far.

On the hardware front, the Nintendo Switch was the best-selling console of the month, though the PlayStation 4 is still the top-seller overall for 2017. Total October US hardware spending amounted to $238 million, which is up 10 percent. For the year, hardware spending rose 19 percent to $2.3 billion, with Switch, plug-and-play consoles like the SNES Classic, and the PS4 called out as contributors to the growth.

The Accessories and Gamecards category saw spending fall 7 percent, to $113 million. A bright spot was steering wheel sales, which more than doubled thanks in part to the high-profile launches of Forza Motorsport 7 and Gran Turismo Sport.

The PS4's DualShock 4 controller was the best-selling accessory in October, and now becomes the top-selling accessory for all of 2017. The NPD Group added that Sony's Gold wireless stereo headset is the top-seller of the year for PS4, with Turtle Beach's Ear Force Recon 50X headset topping the charts for Xbox One this year.

Overall, covering software, hardware, and accessories, US video game sales dropped 11 percent to $825 million. While hardware grew, it wasn't enough to offset the declines in the games and accessories categories.