Originally published on Trevor Trove on January 20, 2016
Following up on the NPD numbers that came out last week, the PlayStation blog has revealed their best selling digital games from December and all of 2015. So I’ve gathered the Top 10s from PS4, PS3, PS Vita, and PS Classics for both categories and I’ll throw in some of my typical analysis.
December PS4 and PS3 Best-sellers:
December PS4 and PS3 Highlights:
- While Call of Duty sold best in December on the NPD charts, Star Wars Battlefront topped it on PS4. Battlefront didn’t appear on last-gen so Call of Duty took the top spot on PS3 (even though the last-gen versions of the game are just the multiplayer).
- Perennial PS Classic favorite Final Fantasy VII launched strong on the PS4 now that it’s got trophies.
- As they did on the NPD charts, Grand Theft Auto V and Minecraft crack the Top 10 on both systems despite their age.
- Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, the only other new title on the PS4 list save list enters at #5. Similarly of the PS3 side, Yakuza 5 hits #5 on that list now that it has finally been localized for the West.
- Rocket League continues to chart well at #8, especially considering all the people who got it free as a PS+ game back in July.
- I’d have to guess that sales and discounts led to games like LittleBigPlanet 3, Dragon Ball Xenoverse, and Battlefield 4 appearing on these lists after all this time. Battlefield was from October 2013, LBP 3 from November 2014, and Dragon Ball from last February.
December Vita and PS Classics Best-sellers:
December Vita and PS Classics Highlights:
- Now that Bastion finally arrived on the Vita, it topped the charts for December. I wonder if these downloads include people who downloaded it for free via Sony’s Cross-Buy program and already bought it on PS4?
- Minecraft cannot be stopped. Even on the Vita.
- Honestly, I can’t speak to most of the Vita titles like Hyperdimension Neptunia, Oreshika, Tales of Hearts R, Sword Art Online, or Legend of Heroes. Though based on everything I’ve heard about Sword Art Online, my love of the PS2 .hack series probably makes me the target demo for it.
- Nuclear Throne was stealth released at PlayStation Experience (alongside Bastion and Bit.Trip) and given away to attendees for free. Again, I wonder how those numbers factor into the overall list.
- The big news hear of course was that Greg Miller praised Taco Master to his audience, plucking them from relative obscurity. That the game charted at #9 suggests the 2015 Trending Gamer can actually affect Trending Games as well.
- And the nearly 20-year Duke Nukem 3D rounds out the Vita’s top-ten. Ha!
- The PS Classics appear to now include the PS2 games being re-released for PS4. Suikoden II and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne are the only two titles on the list that aren’t part of that new program.
- But please please PLEASE let Level-5 and Sony notice how well Dark Cloud did. I’m really hoping they’re testing the waters for a new game in the franchise.
2015 PS4 and PS3 Best-sellers:
2015 PS4 and PS3 Highlights:
- The PS4 list looks a lot like the NPD year-end sales list except instead of the sports triple-threat of Madden, NBA 2K, and FIFA, and the 2014 Call of Duty game, we have Destiny, The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, and Bloodborne.
- This seemingly supports my belief that most people buying the sports games are buying physical.
- I wonder if including digital sales in NPD would have pulled games like Destiny or The Witcher onto their top 10.
- No huge surprises on the PS3 charts. I imagine week for week Black Ops 3 outsold Minecraft but Minecraft had the whole year compared to Call of Duty’s couple months on the last-gen multiplayer only version of the game.
- And people who maybe haven’t upgraded to PS4 love their Mortal Kombat. Even though they never got the Mortal Kombat X port, the MK Arcade Kollection and Mortal Kombat crack the PS3 list.
2015 Vita and PS Classics Best-sellers:
2015 Vita and PS Classics Highlights:
- Not a single game released in 2015 on the 2015 Vita top 10 list, suggesting both a lack of major new titles and a new audience catching up the systems backlog.
- It’s no surprise many of the first games released as part of the PS2 on PS4 program appear on the top-selling classics list: GTA: San Andreas, Final Fantasy VII, GTA: Vice City, and Twisted Metal: Black are all available on PS4 now.
- Considering how long it took to bring to PS Classics, it’s good to see Suikoden II on here.
- And my personal favorite PlayStation-based Final Fantasy: FFIX lands at #10.
- It will be curious to see how heavily the PS4 sales shift the tide of the Classics lists in 2016. If December is any indication, the PS2 on PS4 games will be the new standard for that list.
So that about wraps up my thoughts on December and 2015 sales. Unless Xbox releases there numbers (they won’t) or Nintendo makes a show of it (also unlikely). My super nerdy charts and graphs will be tucked back away until January’s numbers come out. I predict Volume gets the next GameOverGreggy bump though and charts on the Vita top 10 for January and Dark Cloud 2 cracks the top 10 PS Classics for the month.
Thanks for reading!