Over the last 18 months, sales for the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation consoles and the software associated with them have been quite impressive. It's possible that's one of the reasons that new releases on the Switch, the PS5, PS4, Xbox One, and the Xbox Series X/S are all growing at a rate that basically dwarfs what the new release numbers were in 2020.
The events of most of the last two years have offered plenty of reason for the video game industry to see some unprecedented success. The coronavirus pandemic keeping everyone at home, combined with the launch of the Xbox Series X/S and the PS5 saw both new consoles break sales records. However, the pandemic also likely put a dent in just how many games could be brought to market. It appears the industry is correctly that problem this year though.
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Industry Analyst Mat Piscatella took to Twitter recently to illustrate just how many new games have arrived on the Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony consoles in 2021. The analyst laid out that newly released games for the Nintendo Switch are up about 34 percent year over year. He said that last year around this time, the Switch saw about 1,152 new releases whereas this year, it's already seen 1,543 new games. Both of those numbers outpace Sony and Microsoft.
While the Xbox Series X/S and PS5 launches were in line with their predecessors' numbers, newly released games are having quite a bit more success on those platforms than retailers saw the year prior. It stands to reason that two brand new consoles are helping how many new games are getting released to some degree, though it doesn't appear to be the entire explanation.
Piscatella reported that new releases on the PS4 and PS5 currently sit at 1,171, which is a 66 percent increase over 2020 when there were just 704 new releases at this point in the year. The Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S have seen 889 new releases hit the consoles this year, compared to 551 a year ago, for a 61 percent increase.
Piscatella did reveal there is a bit of a caveat when it came to those impressive numbers. NPD, the company that compiled the statistics counted the games released on both the PS4 and PS5 and/or the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S as separate SKUs. For example, Madden NFL 22 releasing on both the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X/S is counted as two new releases, rather than one title. Knowing that, the number of new releases on the Nintendo Switch is even more impressive.