“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” opens The Tale of Two Cities, but more than launching the classical work of Charles Dickens it amply describes current year minus one’s gaming scene.
Were it not for the advent of digital distribution allowing for the growth of smaller publishers and developers to self-publish some of the best titles of last year, gaming would be comatose. The Triple-A industry, with few exceptions, spent the last year pushing more anti-consumer practices, more agendas to mask their tax credit schemes, and a slew of comedic flops and controversies that filled our sick sense of humor lives with an abundance of joy.
Laughably, but unsurprisingly when Amazon released its list of the 100 top selling products in gaming for 2020 most of them were gift cards, controls, and Nintendo products .
- $10 PlayStation Store gift card (Sony)
- $10 Xbox gift card (Microsoft)
- $10 Nintendo eShop gift card (Nintendo)
- 12-month PlayStation Plus membership (Sony)
- Super Smash Bros Ultimate (Nintendo)
- Pokémon Sword (Nintendo)
- Switch Pro Controller (Nintendo)
- Xbox Wireless Controller – Black (Microsoft)
- Luigi’s Mansion 3 (Nintendo)
- Pokémon Shield (Nintendo)
It isn’t until the fifteenth position that a non-Nintendo product successfully makes the list. Call of Duty Modern Warfare, a game steeped in controversy and despite dominating sales charts in November only released the amount of money generated in the first week is the best selling non Nintendo product.
Kingdom Hearts 3 for the Playstation 4 takes the honor of being the second non-Nintendo game to make the list at rank 24. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order again for the PS4 took 31st with Modern Warfare on the Xbox One taking 32nd and Spider-man sitting at 33rd.
Gift cards by their nature are always going to place high, but that AAA industry is outsold consistently by Nintendo products who dominates the list with a whopping 41 products demonstrates the absolute state of the industry right now.
Many AAA titles that launched last year outright failed to even rank in the top 100 product. With Amazon becoming a dominate market for game sales those are definitely metrics that should concern the industry going into 2020.
