In July, Ghost of Tsushima was the 110th best-selling game by dollar sales in the US — not even worth a mention in a sales roundup. In August, thanks to the Director's Cut release, it shot up to No. 2.
According to The NPD Group, it was second only to Madden NFL 22, which took the top spot in its launch month for the 22nd year in a row and became the fourth best-selling game of the entire year so far. For the year, it's currently sitting behind Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, MLB The Show 21, and Resident Evil: Village, though if history is any indication we'll see Call of Duty: Vanguard blast past them all later this year.
Humankind debuted in August as the best-selling PC game and the fourth best-selling game overall, while The Last of Us Part 2 jumped from No. 23 to No. 10 thanks to various retail promotions.
On the hardware side, sales in August were up 45% from last year to $329 million — once again not a shocking increase given that this time last year everyone was holding off on buying consoles while waiting for the new ones. That said, the last time sales were that high was in 2008, a few years after the release of the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360.
The Nintendo Switch was once again the best selling console for the month in unit sales and remains the best-selling console of the year so far, though the PS5 beat it in both categories if you look at dollar sales and remains the fastest-selling PlayStation console ever.
Accessories spending was flat at $164 million, with the Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless controller as the best-selling accessory for the month. The PS5 DualSense Wireless Controller White remained in the top spot for the year so far.
In total, spending on all games hardware, content, and accessories in August was up 7% from last year to a total of $4.4 billion.
The following are the top ten best-selling games for August 2021 by dollar sales. As always, keep in mind that this does not include digital sales of several major game publishers, including Take-Two Interactive and Nintendo, and only counts physical sales for those games, meaning some games may have sold more than they appear to:
- Madden NFL 22
- Ghost of Tsushima
- Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War
- Humankind
- Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
- Mario Kart 8
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
- Minecraft
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla
- MLB: The Show 21
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.