No Man's Sky PS4 PlayStation 4 1

Oh look, it's the NPD report. You may have noticed that we skipped coverage of this over the past couple of months. Apologies for that, but the NPD has changed the way it makes this information available. We used to get platform ordering for software sales and all sorts of other intel, but that can only be accessed by paying members now. More to the point, it's included some digital sales data, but it's such a small subset of info that we can't even be arsed to research what is and isn't incorporated. Sloppy journalism.

Anyway, the Xbox One won the hardware battle in the United States in August, as was the case in July also. Last month saw the release of the slim model, of course, while it's also been clearing out stock of the older version of the console, so good on Microsoft for breaking Sony's streak. Hardware sales were still down six per cent year-over-year, however, which isn't amazing news – but software did increase by eight per cent, so there's that.

Speaking of software: Madden NFL 17 topped, while No Man's Sky came in at second. That's an incredible result for the Hello Games developed sci-fi title, and while we don't have access to any numbers, it finished above Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, which is frankly insane. Grand Theft Auto V, Overwatch, and all of the other usual suspects padded out the top ten, with Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege doing particularly well in sixth position.

And that's it. Welcome to the new NPD reports, people – we're not even going to grace them with a GIF image anymore. It'll be interesting to see whether the PS4 Slim can have the same impact in September as Microsoft's new machine – it's looking unlikely given that most interest is centred on the PS4 Pro, which doesn't launch until 10th November.

NPD Software Top Ten: August 2016

  1. Madden NFL 17
  2. No Man's Sky
  3. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
  4. Grand Theft Auto V
  5. Overwatch
  6. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege
  7. Call of Duty: Black Ops III
  8. Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens
  9. Minecraft
  10. Destiny: The Taken King

[source venturebeat.com, via neogaf.com]