The Witcher 3 and PS4 Lead NPD Sales Charts for May

Sony's PlayStation 4 leads another month of console sales as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt performs a Fatality on Mortal Kombat X for the top spot.

The video game industry-tracking firm, the NPD Group, has provided its monthly sales report for May 2015. Courtesy of Venture Beat, we have learned that physical game sales accounted for $507.6 million the industry made last month. While that sounds like a substantial amount, it is still $77.3 million lower compared to May 2014 (a 13 percent decrease). Mind you, May 2014 had Watch Dogs, Wolfenstein: The New Order and Mario Kart 8 on the market as new releases. It's nice to see that Splatoon started off strong, taking spot # 5 on the list, despite launching on May 29, which is great for a new IP and certainly a much-needed W for Nintendo. Mind you, it made the top five with only two days of sales on the market.

In terms of hardware, over $153.6 million was made in May 2015, which is significantly lower than the $186.4 million made in May 2014. At the same time, current-gen console rush was still happening during that time and has since started to simmer down.

“The decline in May 2015 is attributed to poor comparisons to a strong release slate in May 2014, specifically the launches of Mario Kart 8 and Watch Dogs,” said NPD analyst Liam Callahan. “Collectively, May 2015 launches sold 55 percent less dollars than May 2014 launches, however, catalog games outside of the launch month sold 3 percent more dollar volume compared to catalog games in May 2014. Despite poor comparisons to May 2014 releases, eighth generation consoles software unit sales rose 8 percent in May 2015 and also gained 15 percentage points in overall software unit share to total 54 percent.

Here's what the sales rankings look like for May 2015 (with their highest selling platform formats in descending order):

1. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PS4, Xbox One, PC)
2. Mortal Kombat X (PS4, Xbox One)
3. Grand Theft Auto V (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, PC)
4. Minecraft (360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4)
5. Splatoon (Wii U)
6. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare (PS4, 360, Xbox One, PS3, PC)
7. NBA 2K15 (360, PS4, Xbox One, PS3, PC)
8. FIFA 15 (PS4, Xbox One, 360, PS3, Wii , 3DS, Vita)
9. MLB 15: The Show (PS4, PS3)
10. Super Smash Bros. (3DS, Wii U)

Based on this list, Sony is also leading the charts for multi-console releases. In terms of hardware, the PS4 was the top-selling console for the month after April was one of the few times where the Xbox One pulled ahead. Xbox representatives cited overall growth in sales and Xbox Live subscriptions, despite taking second place to Sony in the current-gen console war.

“Xbox One and Xbox Live continue to see strong growth in sales and engagement. Xbox One sales in the U.S. were up 81 percent over May 2014 and active global Xbox Live members, Xbox One and Xbox 360, were up 20 percent,” a Microsoft spokesperson said. “We are grateful to our fans for choosing Xbox One and for making Xbox Live the fun and vibrant community that is. We can’t wait to share more on the greatest games lineup in Xbox history at E3 next week.”