Forget about the PS5 and new Xbox: Nintendo is dominating console sales this holiday season

• The Nintendo Switch was November's best-selling console — the 24th month in a row it held the top spot in the hardware sales charts from the NPD Group.
• Critically, the Switch beat out the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox consoles in their launch month.
• Overall sales for Nintendo were up 73% year-over-year for the six months between April 1 and September 30.

As the hype around new PlayStation and Xbox consoles built to a fever pitch in November, Nintendo quietly outsold both: The Switch was the best selling game console last month, according to the NPD Group.

Sony's PlayStation 5 and Microsoft's Xbox Series S|X launched in mid-November and, if you didn't pre-order one earlier this year, they've been hard to find.

Nintendo Switch, however, is widely available and continues to be wildly popular: Eight of the 20 best-selling games in November are only available on the Switch, according to the NPD Group's tracking.

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The Japanese gaming giant was having an absolutely massive year even before the critical holiday sales season began.

"Animal Crossing: New Horizons," which launched in March, is on track to be the company's best-selling Switch game yet, and overall sales for the company were up 73% year-over-year for the six months between April 1 and September 30.

November marked the 24th month in a row that the Nintendo Switch has led both Sony and Microsoft's consoles in sales, according to the NPD Group. The company has sold just shy of 70 million Switch consoles worldwide as of September 30, spurred in part by boosted sales due to the ongoing impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.

With millions of people stuck indoors, many turned to video games - including a surprisingly large group of older Americans. Among the groups measured in a recent study, older folks saw the largest gains - with a nearly 60% spike in game playing among people 45 to 54-years-old.

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