Another year, another chart-topping launch for the Madden NFL franchise.
Buy Now was the top-selling game last month and is already the sixth bestselling game of the year, NPD reported on Monday. The game is the 21st consecutive Madden franchise launch to have topped the bestselling game chart during its respective launch month. NPD didn’t release sales figures for the game but said Madden NFL 21 secured “double-digit percentage dollar sales growth” compared to last year’s Madden NFL 20.
But Madden NFL 21 wasn’t the only EA Sports hit last month. The studio’s other August launch, Buy Now , landed behind Madden NFL 21 as the second best-selling game last month. According to NPD, the title also secured the franchise’s highest monthly sales number.
Activision’s Buy Now and Sony’s Buy Now landed in the third and fourth spots, respectively. Buy Now rounded out the top five.
All told, Americans bought $2.9 billion in video game software and associated content, like DLC, last month. That was up from the $2.1 billion spent last August.
NPD’s data looks at both physical and digital sales across the U.S. The company collects the information on video game consoles, games, and accessories and reports its findings each month.
Although the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will launch in November, gamers didn’t show any signs of slowing their hardware spending last month, either. They spent $229 million on game hardware in August, up 37% compared to the $167 million they spent in August 2019. Nintendo’s Switch led the hardware charge last month and secured a record-breaking August. NPD didn’t say how many Switch units Nintendo sold last month but said sales more than doubled last August’s tally.
It was a similarly strong month for accessories, NPD reported on Monday. American consumers spent $166 million on accessories, including controllers, steering wheels, and headsets, last month, a 42% gain over the same period last year. Buy Now was the top-selling accessory last month, topping July’s best-seller, the Buy Now . Buy Now was the best-selling steering wheel last month and the Buy Now was the August leader in headsets.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.