November NPD: PlayStation 4 overtakes Xbox One and there's no stopping Call of Duty

November was a good month for next gen-consoles and also an important month for sales in the video game industry. American consumers spent $2.47 billion on new game softwares, hardwares, and accessories at physical retailers in the United States last month. That is up by 2 percent from 2014, when gamers spent $2.42 billion. Most of that growth came from hardwares, which saw an increase in revenue despite price cuts. PlayStation 4 emerged the victor, but it was a good month for all console hardware makers.

VG24/7 reports that, the NPD Group has released its November 2015 report on games industry spends in the US and the news is indeed pleasing. The PS4, Xbox One and Wii U combined had an especially good month, driving new-gen hardware sales to multiple new record highs with 3 million sales over the course of the month. The PS4 and Xbox One accounted for 2.8 million of these sales.

"November 2015 marked the best month ever in total unit sales for 8th generation consoles (Xbox One, PS4, and Wii U), surpassing sales of December 2014 (now second-highest), and November 2014 (now third-highest)," the NPD's Liam Callahan said.

The PS4 outsold the Xbox One in November, which took us by surprise. Last year, Xbox triumphed over both holiday sales months, since consumers tend to take advantage of sales to pick up the runner-up console. But this year, Sony and Microsoft's price wars didn't affect the PS4's momentum.

"We are also pleased to announce November was the biggest month ever for PlayStation Store indicating strong digital marketplace complementing healthy retail sales," Sony Marketing SVP, Eric Lempel, said.

Despite the growth in hardware and multiple new releases, retail software sales actually dipped during November. This isn't much of a surprise because in general, retail software sales track downwards as digital absorbs more and more industry spend. 

According to Shack News, as for software, it seems that there is no stopping Call of Duty. Not only did it emerge on top of the software charts for November, it even managed to surpass opening sales of last year's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. As for Fallout 4, it sold the most of any game in franchise history, with Callahan comparing its sales to that of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Meanwhile, Star Wars Battlefront took a third-place finish and has the distinction of having the highest-selling first month for a Star Wars game ever, eclipsing Star Wars: The Force Unleashed by 21 percent. One major sales disappointment was Rise of the Tomb Raider, with the Xbox One-exclusive missing the Top 10 by a wide margin.

Overall, software sales fell 7%, to $1.02 billion which portable software dropping sharply by 66% and console holding pretty steady with a 1% decline. However, new-gen software sales increased 37%, only offset by the 60% decline in last-gen software sales.

According to Venture Beat, following are top 10 games:

1.        Call of Duty: Black Ops III (Xbox One, PS4, 360, PS3, PC)

2.        Fallout 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

3.        Star Wars: Battlefront (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

4.        Madden NFL 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

5.        NBA 2K16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

6.        FIFA 16 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3)

7.        Need For Speed (PS4, Xbox One)

8.        Halo 5: Guardians (Xbox One)

9.        Assassin's Creed: Syndicate (PS4, Xbox One, PC)

10.     Just Dance 2016 (Wii, Wii U, 360, Xbox One, PS4, PS3)

The sales figures indicate that November was a good month for video game industry and Sony PlayStation as victor among the new-gen gaming consoles. These figures include new, physical retail sales only. They don't reflect the increasingly weighty proportion of industry spend made through digital channels, which means things are even better than they look.