• by Wayne Friedman , November 20, 2020

Amid COVID-19 pandemic disruptions, global video-game sales continue to climb.

SuperData, a Nielsen company, says consumers spent 14% more on digital games in October, rising to $10.6 billion.

Spending on games for consoles -- PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch -- grew 18% over the same month a year ago. Spending on mobile was up 15% and spending on PCs climbed 10%.

Overall, the top-grossing titles as of October 2020 were “League of Legends” and “Crossfire” on PC, “NBA 2K21” and “FIFA 21” for consoles, and “Pokemon Go” and “Genshin Impact” on mobile.

Looking at just the month of October, “Genshin Impact” from miHoYo, a China-based developer, was the highest-grossing game across mobile, PlayStation 4 and PC platforms.

The title, which released on September 28, features revenue-generating “gacha” tool -- a monetization device used in many Japanese-developed free-to-play games. For “Genshin” users pay for the chance to get random in-game items.

Nielsen's SuperData says overall growth was impressive, given that many new versions of the biggest franchise games were not released until November 2019.

In the previous month of September, worldwide video-game revenues were also up 14% to $10.7 billion.

Video-game usage is estimated to have steadily climbed this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.