The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has been an absolutely huge part of Nintendo’s software and hardware success in 2023, and this trend continued in the month of August in the US.
As highlighted by Circana (via video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella), Tears of the Kingdom actually moved up a spot in the “top 20 best-selling premium games” for August 2023, going from seventh to sixth place.
Madden NFL 24 debuted in the top spot, with FromSoftare’s new Armored Core game just below this and Remnant II in third place. Apart from Zelda, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe also managed to crack the top 10 in the charts, and Pikmin 4 dropped from sixth to 11th place in August.
It’s worth noting the digital sales of the Nintendo titles are not factored in, so they could be a lot more popular than this chart suggests. As we get closer to the holiday period, Tears of the Kingdom is likely to continue to sell incredibly well in the US.
As for hardware, sales fell by 13% year over year to $328 million and the Switch had a bit of a slump itself during August:
Mat Piscatella: “Video game hardware spending fell 13% when compared to a year ago, to $328 million. PlayStation 5 dollar sales fell by a single-digit percentage in the month when compared to a year ago, while both Switch and Xbox Series declined by a double-digit percentage…PlayStation 5 was the best-selling hardware platform in both unit and dollar sales during August 2023, with Xbox Series ranking 2nd across both measures.”
