The Sony PlayStation 4 is the best-selling console for August, according to a monthly report released by the market research company NPD Group, which provides an overview of product sales in the U.S.
The report, however, only reflected physical sales and did not take online product sales, both software and hardware, into the summary. As a response, Sony was quick to release a statement claiming that the PS4 did indeed top the console market last month, having a consistent market performance throughout 2015, except in April when the NPD reported that the Xbox One beat the PS4 in terms of physical sales.
"We would like to thank our fans and partners for their ongoing support of PlayStation and for making PS4 the top selling console and No. 1 in software sales in North America in August," a Sony spokesperson said.
Together with the console sales, NPD also released its list of best-selling games for August. Madden NFL 16, a football game developed and produced by Electronic Arts, topped the console game section and was reported to have sold more on PS4 than the Xbox One. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that this does not include software bundles. Madden NFL 16 copies that were coupled with Xbox One were not taken into account.
"Bundles are increasingly becoming the standard way to purchase console hardware as 93 percent of unit sales in August 2015 came from bundles, which compares to 41 percent in August 2014," NPD analyst Liam Callahan noted.
Sony, however, did not provide any sales figures, which does not come as a surprise for even the competition. Microsoft, for its Xbox One, also failed to release its sales sheet, only noting that Xbox One sales were up compared with August last year.
"Xbox One continued to gain momentum in August, with sales in the U.S. up 26 percent over August 2014" said Xbox CMO Mike Nichols.
Although sales of PS4 and Xbox One were up, August 2015 was not a big month for consoles.
Callahan said figures for console software's physical sales for newer versions, Xbox One and PS4, failed to offset the 51 percent decline in previous console generation sales.
"This led to the 10 percent decline in August 2015 sales versus August 2014," Callahan concluded.
The report showed that $548 million was spent on both games and related hardware within the U.S. last month. Although this is a 2 percent decline, Americans spent $22.4 billion in 2014 for gaming: $15.4 billion on content, $5.1 billion on hardware and $1.9 billion on accessories.
