The NPD Group, which tracks sales data across the US games industry, has released its data for January, and the results are pretty unsurprising. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has secured victory in the software stakes yet again, marking the fourth consecutive month of dominance for the shooter, while EA's Dead Space remake brings up second place and the PS5 pips the Switch in the world of hardware.
This news comes courtesy of NPD's Mat Piscatella, who routinely releases the Group's data in the form of a Twitter thread. January's data reveals that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has remained at the top of the all-format "premium games" chart (which excludes microtransactions or DLC), following on from a similar showing in December. The Dead Space remake is in second place.
That's perhaps not the best result for EA, given that Dead Space launched in January, which means you might expect it to perform better than a four-month-old game in its launch month (even if that game is Call of Duty). Still, two EA Sports stalwarts, Madden NFL 23 and FIFA 23, are in third and fourth place respectively, so EA probably isn't going to worry too much about its bottom line just yet.
NPD's data also shows that The Last of Us: Part I leapt 25 places on January's chart, going from number 36 in December to number 11 in January. This is thanks to the debut of the TV show, which drew in an impressive number of viewers for its January premiere and which has performed very well since then, too. If you're a Last of Us fan, that might soften the blow of the recent Part I PC delay.
Following the PS5 and Switch trading hardware blows in terms of unit and dollar sales back in December, Sony will be pleased to see that the PS5 has emerged as January's sole hardware victor. It pipped the Switch to the post in both unit and dollar sales for the month, with Microsoft's Xbox Series X|S lagging behind again. Still, if Microsoft's Activision Blizzard deal goes through (and that's not a given right now), the company can comfort itself with Call of Duty. Watch this space for more info.
