Games spending down 10% to $26.3bn in H1 2022 | US monthly charts

US consumer spending decreased 11% to $4.3 billion this June 2022 compared to the same period last year, NPD reported in its monthly charts.

Analyst Mat Piscatella noted a growth in subscription spending but it "could not offset declines in other areas of content spending, while hardware and accessory spending also dropped."

Overall, spending for the first half of 2022 reached $26.3 billion, a 10% drop year-on-year, with subscription being the only category experiencing growth compared to 2021.

Looking at the charts for June, Elden Ring took the top spot once again, and remained the best-selling game of the year so far.

"Elden Ring has placed first in dollar sales in four of its first five months in the market," Piscatella said.

Following the launch of the Overwatch 2 beta at the end of June, Overwatch re-entered the monthly charts at No.5 -- it's the first time Blizzard's title has been in the charts since 2019.

There were several new entries in the charts, including Mario Strikers: Battle League at No.3 (though Nintendo doesn't share digital sales data), F1 2022 at No.12, and The Quarry at No.19.

Hardware-wise, sales dropped 8% year-on-year during June, to $371 million, and declined 9% throughout the first half of the year, to $2.1 billion.

"PlayStation 5 generated the highest dollar sales amongst video game hardware platforms in both June and the first half of calendar 2022, while Switch led both time periods in unit sales," Piscatella said.

Here's the top 20 selling games in the US for June 2022, data courtesy of the NPD Group:

*Digital sales not included

^ Xbox digital sales not included

Correction:The NPD previously stated that Elden Ring was among the top ten best-selling games of all time in the US, but has since retracted this statement, clarifying that it was based on an incomplete data set. We have removed the reference to this in the article.