The first week of the new year is a time to look back on the last one, which online retail giant Amazon is doing by publishing its list of best selling games and consoles of 2016. The company did great business in the console market thanks to its packaging of the PS4 with top-selling games likeUncharted 4andCall of Duty: Black Ops 3. On Amazon’s list of best selling games,Pokemon SunandMoonfor the 3DS are in first and second place, while third goes to the long-awaitedFinal Fantasy 15.
Thelistas it stands isn’t filtered by country, region, or date, so it represents an overview of how wellAmazondid over all of 2016. That said, it gives a general idea as to how well certain games sold, especially those for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Observant readers will likely notice there are no PC titles on the list as pretty much all those are sold via either Steam or Origin.
Amazon’s top three for best selling consoles is all Sony, with the first two spots going to the bundles mentioned before and the third going to the 1TB version of the PS4. One question raised by the list is whetherUncharted 4scored as well as it did because it was included in Amazon’s PS4 bundle or if its fourth position is based on loose sales; if it is, that means Drake and his many adventures are a huge money-maker for the online retailer. Also it would be interesting to know how the deals on thePS4 Slim and the Xbox One Saffected their rankings.
Oddly missing from the list are any VR headsets, showing that consumers, for whatever reason, are sticking to old-school gaming for now. Speaking of which, theNES that crashed the Amazon siteis also missing from the list despite the mad rush for the classic edition of Nintendo’s original console a few months ago. At one point the servers were so badly overloaded by gamers trying to buy it that the whole website crashed, to much consternation from Amazon HQ.
Game-wise, it’s mostly surprising how much Amazon’s top 10 differs from most other lists concerning thebest games of 2016. The remaster ofSkyrimdid a lot better thanBattlefield 1, for example, and the newDoombarely made it onto the list. Though it may have something to do with 3DS games not always being taken seriously, the top two entries may come as a surprise to some as not everyone would expect friendly, furry creatures to beat out the massive swords ofFinal Fantasy 15.
The current list raises a large number of questions which hopefully will be answered over the next few weeks as more precise figures come out. One thing is for sure: though many in the games industry focus on digital sales, Amazon still holds an important place for people who want to be able to touch the discs their games come on.
