Nintendo has had a good time recently, with the Nintendo Switch OLED and Metroid Dread sales both doing very well, with Dread in particular setting franchise records. It was October's 3rd best selling game and its physical dollar sales almost doubled that of the previous franchise best, Metroid Prime, which launched almost 20 years ago. Nice.
If that 20 year number sounds a little shocking, it's because Metroid hasn't really sold all that much. Observe:
2.84 million is the series peak for Metroid so far, which is a lot lower than I thought it would be. The Metroid Dread sales will change that, of course, but up until Metroid Dread this is what the series sales looked like. Oof.
Last month, the PS5 knocked the Nintendo Switch off its 33-month perch, which didn't last very long. It made sense at the time because September 2021 was pretty sleepy. However, with Metroid Dread selling 854,000 copies in October and the Switch OLED selling 314,000 consoles (out of 711,000 Switch's sold in October), there's no way that the PS5 was going to maintain its crown.
“October this year is only 3 percent lower than what was sold last year, which I think we can all agree was a bit of an anomaly year when it comes to overall hardware sales,” Bowser told The Washington Post, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic. “So we think this is a solid start for the OLED model. We also think this is a very strong indicator of the performance we can expect as we go through the holiday season.”
Overall, October was a good month to be selling video games and video game consoles, with October 2021 reaching an October record of $4.4 billion. 2021 has reached $46.7 billion so far, which is a 12% gain YOY compared to 2020. Hardware dollar sales have also gained 82% compared to a year ago, which is a 16% YOY growth. Considering that we are now a year into next-gen (shouldn't they be called current-gen now?) that makes sense.
In other sales figures, Far Cry 6 was October's best-selling game on both the PlayStation and Xbox platforms and is the 8th best-selling game in 2021 to date. You wonder why Far Cry never changes? Well, that's why. It was also good to be Back 4 Blood, as it landed in second place for October 2021 on both the PlayStation and Xbox platforms.
For more information on all things NPD stats, stay tuned to TechRaptor.
What do you think of these sales numbers? Are you shocked to see the Metroid series selling so few? Are you surprised by the amount of Metroid Dread sales? What do you do see out of Metroid in the future? Let us know in the comments!
