Nintendo's Switch gaming socsole outsold its rivals last month, while the PS4 remains the top dog in year-to-date sales, according to data from the reliable NPD Group.

Nintendo sold more than 8.7 million Switch consoles in the US from its launch in March 2017 through November of 2018, putting it on a faster pace than the other "current generation" consoles from Microsoft and Sony after the same amount of time following their releases. In pure numbers, there are more Xbox One and PS4 consoles out in the wild, but Nintendo is in a better spot than they were before the Switch arrived.

Compared to last year, hardware spending was up 3 percent in November to $3.9 billion, with the Nintendo Switch's gains helping to offset declines on other platforms.

On the software side, the biggest selling game of November -- and the second biggest seller year-to-date -- was Red Dead Redemption 2. The top spot for the year went to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. In third place last month was Battlefield V, followed by the much-maligned Fallout 76. Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee nabbed the fifth and sixth slots respectively.

However, November's software dollar sales were down by 15 percent year-over-year courtesy of CoD's moved release date from November to October. But year-to-date games sales were in excess of $5.8 billion, marking the highest comparable year-to-date total in software since the same period in 2011. Total spending on accessories and game cards also spiked 35 percent year-over-year to an all-time high of $503 million.