God of War was the Top Seller in April 2018

Video game sales numbers! The lifeblood of every online games journalist! The NPD Group just released their April report yesterday, and it is chalk full with the most up-to-date games sales figures.

And it won’t be surprising to anyone to hear that Sony’s God of War, the soft reboot of their classic PS2/PS3 series, was easily the best seller of the month, and actually set record highs for Sony, being the highest-ever sales by dollar in a launch month for a PlayStation exclusive game. Which is an… oddly specific record, but hell, take what you can get, right? Regardless, God of War alone carried Sony into being April’s top-selling publisher, but they’re still a far cry from being the top earner for the year: a Far Cry 5, I should say, because Ubisoft is still riding high off its success, with it being the second-best-seller in April.

For the record, MLB 18: The Show was in third, and surprisingly, the Nintendo Labo Variety Kit was fourth.

April was also a bigger year for games sales this year than last year, with a in-total boost of around 18% across all categories. The PS4 sold especially well (probably because of God of War), selling more consoles in this month than Nintendo did in April of 2009 with the Wii.

It’s not surprising at all to see God of War move the industry and the game-buying public so much, but it might come as a surprise to certain game developers who are putting all their money in the “games as a service” model, which God of War is definitively not. I don’t think these sales will be enough to reverse that trend – God of War will only make a lot of money and these studios want ALL the money – but it’ll probably raise some eyebrows.

Cool stats all around.