Video games brought in the bucks in 2018

The video game industry had a pretty good year in 2018.

According to data released by The NPD Group, which tracks video game sales in the U.S., the video game industry brought in $43. 3 billion last year, an 18 percent increase from 2017. To put that into perspective, the U.S. video game market by itself made more money than the movie industry made worldwide in 2018, an estimated $41.7 billion according to Deadline Hollywood.

For the first time since the PlayStation 4 was released in 2013, Sony's system was not the best selling console of the year. Although the PlayStation 4 was the top selling console for 10 of the 12 months last year, Nintendo had such a strong holiday season that the Switch was the top selling console of 2018, according to NPD.

It wasn't just video game systems that sold well either. Although sales figures weren't released, "Red Dead Redemption 2" just barely outsold "Call of Duty: Black Ops 4" to be the best selling game of last year.

Although I expect the PlayStation 4 to continue to sell well this year, more than 91.6 million units have been sold to date and I expect them to break 100 million units this year, I do think Nintendo will outsell Sony again in 2019. It's a newer system, having been on the market for less than year years.

On top of that, Sony is just kind of in a nebulous place in 2019. It has three big blockbuster games announced, "Death Stranding," "Ghost of Tsushima" and "The Last of Us Part 2," which is the non-Star Wars game I'm looking forward to the most. But none of those games have a release date and it's unknown if any of them will even come out this year. Sony didn't have a PlayStation Experience, their big annual fanfest event usually held in December, last year and they've already announced they won't have a press conference at E3, the largest video game trade show of the year, this year.

Both of those decisions were upsetting because I love their press conferences.

On top of that, the PlayStation 5 hasn't been officially announced yet. Everyone knows the next generation of consoles is coming soon, we just don't know how soon.

Dusty Ricketts is the editor of The Destin Log and The Walton Sun newspapers and can be reached at dricketts@thedestinlog.com. He is currently playing "Star Wars Battlefront 2" and "Friday the 13th: The Game." You can find him to play online through his PlayStation Network ID, DustRAG316.