Nintendo’s Older Games Are Killing It Right Now

Nintendo continues absolutely dominating the competition in terms of game sales.

The Japanese Switch maker had eight of the top 20 best-selling games for July 2021, according to analytics firm NPD Group, and most of those games aren’t even new.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, which just came out July, took the top spot, beating out other new releases Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin and Neo: The World Ends with You.

Complete Nintendo’s entries to the top sales list were Mario Kart 8 in fourth place, the newer Mario Golf: Super Rush at six, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate at 10, last year’s incredible hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons at 12, Super Mario 3D World at 14, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at 17, and finally the combined Pokémon: Sword/Shield at 18.

US NPD SW – July 2021 Top 20 Sellers pic.twitter.com/k7pSlcq9cg

— Mat Piscatella (@MatPiscatella) August 13, 2021

What’s truly astounding about these numbers, however, is that they don’t include any of the titles’ online sales figures. NPD is normally able to pull data from both physical and digital sales, but all of Nintendo’s games are marked with asterisks denoting, “digital sales not included.”

Even so, it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise considering Nintendo’s latest earnings reports, which was positive to say the least. In it, we learned that more people are buying Mario Kart 8, which was first released all the way back on the Wii U in 2014, over some of Nintendo’s newer games. And while Animal Crossing: New Horizons isn’t selling quite as well as it did last year, that’s only because it did absolutely bonkers numbers in 2020.

So, yeah, Nintendo’s doing pretty well.

NPD’s full ranking of dollar sales across all platforms for July is as follows:

1. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
2. Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War
3. Monster Hunter Stories 2: Wings of Ruin
4. Mario Kart 8
5. Minecraft
6. Mario Golf: Super Rush
7. MLB: The Show 21
8. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales
9. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)
10. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
11. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
12. Animal Crossing: New Horizons
13. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
14. Super Mario 3D World
15. Mortal Kombat 11
16. Neo: The World Ends With You
17. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
18. Pokémon: Sword/Shield
19. Resident Evil: Village
20. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla