Beancounters at NPD have revealed their October figures for the US video game market and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 leads the way ahead of Red Dead Redemption 2, although to be fair - Treyarch's title has had quite the time advantage.
Treyarch and Activision launched Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on 12 October 2018, leaving it ample time to build up momentum. That same momentum made sure that the game racked up in its opening weekend and NPD's numbers for the rest of the month agree.
NPD's Mat Piscatella said that Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 had the eighth highest dollar sales since the group started tracking the market. "Black Ops 4 instantly becomes the best-selling game of the year, and the second best-selling game across the past twelve month period, trailing only Call of Duty: WWII", he added.
Red Dead Redemption 2, on the other hand, launched on 26 October 2018, which left it much less time to make a mark in NPD's numbers. We've already heard about the game's , which netted Rockstar and Take-Two $725 million in the process and NPD once again agrees.
"With just nine days of reported sales, Red Dead Redemption 2 is the second best-selling game of October 2018 and is now also the second best-selling game year to date", Piscatella said. He added that its opening month sales nearly tripled those of the original Red Dead Redemption, which is in line with Take-Two's report of it the original in just eights days.
Note however that NPD's numbers don't include Call of Duty: Black Ops 4's digital PC sales because Activision, Blizzard and Activision Blizzard don't share their Battle.net numbers. This means that CoD's score is probably even better than projected.
Rockstar
Also, bear in mind that NPD's numbers refer to dollar sales rather than units sold. That being said, their October 2018 chart looks like this:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 4
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey
- NBA 2K19
- Super Mario Party
- Soul Calibur VI
- FIFA 19
- Spider-Man
- Madden NFL 19
- WWE 2K19
