console sales are massively down year-over-year — and it's going to get worse

[Marees]

it's not just Xbox, ALL video game console sales are massively down year-over-year — and it's going to get worse​

News
By Adam Hales published 1 hour ago
New Circana data shows console sales are falling across Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo — driven by rising prices, weaker demand, and warning signs that the situation may worsen.

Circana, which regularly tracks and reports on industry sales, recently published figures showing total U.S. game spending fell 4% year over year to $5.9 billion. That decline spans hardware, software, and accessories, rather than being isolated to one segment.

While this data only reflects the U.S. market, the historical context is striking. November 2025 marked the worst November for U.S. hardware unit sales since 1995, an era dominated by systems like the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and SNES, long before the modern console landscape took shape.


According to Circana, hardware spending dropped 27% year over year to $695 million, with unit sales falling to 1.6 million. That makes November 2025 the weakest November for U.S. hardware unit sales since 1995.

Xbox Series hardware sales declined by 70% year over year, while PlayStation 5 sales fell by more than 40%. Combined Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 unit sales were down by around 10%, which stands out as relatively resilient by comparison.


Software trends offer little comfort. Physical game sales fell 14% year over year, making November 2025 the worst November for physical software sales since 1995, even as subscription spending rose by 16%.


Accessories followed the same downward trend. Spending in that category fell 13% year over year, reinforcing that consumers are pulling back across the entire ecosystem, not just on consoles themselves.


https://www.windowscentral.com/gami...own-year-over-year-and-its-going-to-get-worse

 

[DukenukemX]

I've been saying this for a while and it shouldn't surprise anyone. When you price your console to the point when you can buy a PC instead, then people buy a PC instead. Even if it costs a bit more, it also makes sense to go PC because you can do other things besides gaming like video editing and school work and porn. Not to forget that PC gaming has things going for it like backwards compatibility, modding, emulation, and homebrew and piracy.

 

[LukeTbk]

very mature 5 years in the cycle combined with higher price than at launch for some, rough unprecedented combo.

And it is not because black friday spending was generally low in 2025:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/claral...ne-spending-record-with-118-billion-in-sales/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/16/consumer-sentiment-retail-sales-holiday-walmart-tjx.html
The contrast between spending data and consumer sentiment captures a head-scratching gap between what consumers are saying and what they are doing.



with a strange mix of consumer spending continuing to break records despite quite low confidence, usually that goes down with it, it could be that AI (amazon, google, etc...) got good at making people spend despite saying they do not want to (800% increase in ai-driven traffic to retailers)

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

I've been saying this for a while and it shouldn't surprise anyone. When you price your console to the point when you can buy a PC instead, then people buy a PC instead. Even if it costs a bit more, it also makes sense to go PC because you can do other things besides gaming like video editing and school work and porn. Not to forget that PC gaming has things going for it like backwards compatibility, modding, emulation, and homebrew and piracy.
View attachment 773137

Maybe applicable for our bubble, but I dont think people switching to PC is the primary driver of the decline in console sales.

Its the tail end of the hardware cycle and not many are going to get the PS5 pro. Also, the Switch 2 is looking to be kind of a flop deapite their hardware claims (I think alot of these were scooped up by scalpers). There is nothing worth buying for the new sytem beyond DK.

Moreover, peope are sick of the teerible online experience. I feel bad for the current generation that never got to experience the glory days of XBL on the 360 where everyone had a mic,much less censorship, and you were not constantly being bothered with mandatory updates or special offers on the dash board.

 

[HeadRusch]

5 year Old Hardware (as stated by LukeTbk) + Higher Prices (!!?!??)+ Almost NO noteworthy games released for years = Retail Apathy. Considering if you ignore the bullshit console version of "ray tracing", you can build a PC and get 60fps by setting your own tweaks and resolutions for roughly the same money on nearly every game available, while most $500 consoles will lock you to 30fps. PC you will pay less for the software on every single game. Plus you get Sony titles. Your library is also significantly vaster...vaster? It's Vast! compared to consoles. What you lose is the walled garden and easy of use without any of the Windows 11 bullshit nor having to deal with patches, drivers and on and on......consoles do that for you behind the scenes. Tor people who just want to press a button and 'game', consoles make sense. BUT not at $500+, not at this point in the current gen lifecycle.

Sony launched it's PS5 Pro at, what, $700 bucks? It came out, people were "Wow its...sorta faster!" and then I honestly forgot it existed until DF did a "1 year later, the PS5 Pro is incredibly Meh" type of video. Sad. But, we'd been riding the top of that wave for a decade or more, ya gotta crash into shore once in awhile.

A bit of an aside but something I also recently noticed: Youtube on PC I only get shorter ads, 5 to 10 seconds, maybe a 15 second one once in awhile. But on my Series X? 50+ second ads several times an hour especially during 'prime viewing times'. dafaq is that about!? Oh right, walled garden.

 

[Red Falcon]

When you price your console to the point when you can buy a PC instead, then people buy a PC instead.

Up until October 31 I would have agreed, but now with RAM, NAND, HDDs, general goods and services, etc. all skyrocketing in price I'm not so sure how true that is going to continue to be.
When RAM alone costs as much as a console, for just gaming individuals are going to go with consoles.

 

[Nobu]

You could run A PC without RAM, you would just need a highly optimized boot process, create a large swap space, and load everything directly into cache, swap as necessary.

It would be very slow, but you could do it. Given a few years, desktop OSs might be able to optimize around the limitation. Maybe we go back to text UI except for specialized applications (games, CADD, etc)

 

[emphy]

I've been saying this for a while and it shouldn't surprise anyone. When you price your console to the point when you can buy a PC instead, then people buy a PC instead. ...

I very much suspect that the vast majority of people are not buying pc's instead, but a little sandwich of contentment (i.e.: nothing, for those whose sarcasm detector didn't catch that).

 

[DukenukemX]

Up until October 31 I would have agreed, but now with RAM, NAND, HDDs, general goods and services, etc. all skyrocketing in price I'm not so sure how true that is going to continue to be.
When RAM alone costs as much as a console, for just gaming individuals are going to go with consoles.

While prices are crazy right now, there's nothing stopping anyone from just using an old PC. To give you an idea a GTX 980 which was released in 2014 can still play Baldur's Gate 3 while a PS4 released in 2014 can't. Even if the PS4 could, doesn't mean anyone is taking the time to port their games. Just so happens I found a machine in the trash with three of these GPU's in SLI and the machine works. Now it's my nephews new gaming PC, which he likes it mostly for the RGB lights. A 5960X with 3x GTX 980's vs Ryzen 7 1700 with RX 470 4GB is not exactly an upgrade but like a side grade.

View: https://youtu.be/eHi1iVas_Lw?si=8T84BSQmttxdLFcj

And it is not because black friday spending was generally low in 2025:

Game spending throughout 2025 wasn't good.

View: https://youtu.be/lzk9Boi0Afg?si=2pNbDFikzB_gT-oS

with a strange mix of consumer spending continuing to break records despite quite low confidence, usually that goes down with it, it could be that AI (amazon, google, etc...) got good at making people spend despite saying they do not want to (800% increase in ai-driven traffic to retailers)

More likely people waited for Black Friday deals to spend which the PS5 had some great deals.

 

[tunatime]

I think this year coming is going to be bad as I think people are running out of fun money. Every supply house I've talked to this year has said business has been way down and it's not just computer parts that have gotten crazy pricey...my cost for some ecm fan motors is getting colse to $1000, and new equipment is even worse.

 

[Flogger23m]

PS5 is $480 at Costco, or was. Pro is/was $680 I think. Honestly given the current market of price increases the PS5 Pro is not a bad deal at that price. It would be interesting to see how the sales drop looks once the holiday season is over. I do expect sales to go down as the PS6 is coming 2027 or so.

 

[bigddybn]

Um, don't most people that want a current generation console have one by now? It's not like buying a new one is any better than the one you bought a few years ago. My series X is the same one I've had since launch. The games are optimized for the same hardware. I'm not buying anything until a new generation launches, if at all. Just finding better things to do with my time as I get older but that's a different conversation.

 

[Red Falcon]

While prices are crazy right now, there's nothing stopping anyone from just using an old PC. To give you an idea a GTX 980 which was released in 2014 can still play Baldur's Gate 3 while a PS4 released in 2014 can't. Even if the PS4 could, doesn't mean anyone is taking the time to port their games. Just so happens I found a machine in the trash with three of these GPU's in SLI and the machine works. Now it's my nephews new gaming PC, which he likes it mostly for the RGB lights. A 5960X with 3x GTX 980's vs Ryzen 7 1700 with RX 470 4GB is not exactly an upgrade but like a side grade.

That was a really cool find on your part, nice work restoring it.
Agreed, if there are spare parts or computers to use then by all means, at this point it is a clear solution.

The high-end GTX 980 from 2014 is also vastly more powerful than the mid-range GPU in the PS4 (rough equivalent to a Radeon HD 7750), which by the way released in 2013.

 

[DukenukemX]

I think this year coming is going to be bad as I think people are running out of fun money. Every supply house I've talked to this year has said business has been way down and it's not just computer parts that have gotten crazy pricey...my cost for some ecm fan motors is getting colse to $1000, and new equipment is even worse.

Inflation has taken it's toll and now it's time for deflation. Which is going to be interesting with Trumps tariffs.

Um, don't most people that want a current generation console have one by now?

Considering the amount of PS5's sold this Black Friday, I think there's still some people who were waiting for a good deal. Also, I believe a number of them were Xbox gamers that wanted to get away from Xbox.

The high-end GTX 980 from 2014 is also vastly more powerful than the mid-range GPU in the PS4 (rough equivalent to a Radeon HD 7750), which by the way released in 2013.

This machine in 2014 must have been extremely expensive. A GTX 980 in 2014 was $550 but a GTX 970 was $330 and was only 10% slower, and for a while the GTX 970 was the most popular graphics card on Steam. If you're in the market for a budget gaming PC then a GTX 980 is only $50-$60 on Ebay. A GTX 1060 still demands $100 on Ebay, which is crazy if you think about how long people were using them. You can still play modern games while using FSR which isn't something the PS4 can use. Valorant unfortunately doesn't work on this machine because it lacks TPM2.0. That game did run on my nephews Ryzen 7 1700 machine because it has TPM2.0. Both running Windows 11 through force.

View: https://youtu.be/rPzLafqdWQ0?si=1CYCJDd-VHGd9iA4

 

[rinaldo00]

Inflation has taken it's toll and now it's time for deflation. Which is going to be interesting with Trumps tariffs.

Deflation (i.e. negative inflation almost never happens) but inflation is decreasing and tariffs were not as bad as expected.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/busin...ls-sharply-to-2-7-percent-in-november-5959870

Price pressures may be cooling across the economy, with the 12‑month inflation rate slowing sharply in November.
The annual inflation rate eased to 2.7 percent last month—the lowest level since July—from 3 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Economists had penciled in a reading of 3.1 percent.
The core consumer price index (CPI), which excludes volatile energy and food prices due to their noisy signals, also cooled to 2.6 percent from 3 percent in September. This represented the lowest reading since March 2021.

Tariff-sensitive items were little changed over the past 12 months.
The apparel index is up 0.2 percent year over year, while the new-vehicle index has risen 0.6 percent over the 12 months ending in November. Additionally, on an annualized basis, appliances have increased by 0.5 percent, smartphones have declined by 9.4 percent, and footwear has dipped by 0.1 percent.

 

[OKC Yeakey Trentadue]

Switch-2U lol


View: https://youtu.be/CZFDPUl8mcM?si=JSS0PXLDp9lGUrVl

 

[MrCrispy]

I gave up PC gaming a while ago due to the costs of pc hardware. I prefer sp games anyway. bought a used ps3 and looked for used physical games as well as sales on PSN. It means I'm not playing the latest shooters etc but doesn't feel like I'm missing out on anything. there's a lifetime worth of excellent games on older consoles/steam etc.

 

[rinaldo00]

Switch-2U lol


View: https://youtu.be/CZFDPUl8mcM?si=JSS0PXLDp9lGUrVl

Apparently DukenukemX and his solo campaign of wishcasting the failure of the Switch 2 (along with his selfish act of NOT buying millions of Switch 2 consoles) caused this.

 

[LukeTbk]

not that they were great but worldwide it was a bit up from last year not down for Nintendo in november 25 vs 24.

 

[Aurelius]

The fantasy:

The people have realized that PC gaming is perfect! They're abandoning consoles en masse! They'll never go back because they crave emulators, mods, and playing that 20-year-old obscure game they played on their parents' computer as a kid!

The boring reality:

Tariffs and inflation have raised prices and reduced shoppers' budgets. We're also deep into the PS5 and XSX lifecycles, so you can add market saturation to the list of obstacles. Many people likely still want consoles, and genuinely don't care about emulators or mods. They're just putting off purchases until they can either afford it or new systems make the investment easier to justify.

 

[DukenukemX]

Apparently DukenukemX and his solo campaign of wishcasting the failure of the Switch 2 (along with his selfish act of NOT buying millions of Switch 2 consoles) caused this.

I never said the Switch 2 would fail, just not be as successful as the Switch 1. The only people who would consider this a failure are the shareholders, who are quick to sell Nintendo to Microsoft and Sony if it meant better stock returns. Pricing a game console and it's games are always a delicate matter that requires consideration of the economy. Nintendo during the 80's knew this better than anyone when making the Gameboy. Nintendo could have made this into a powerful handheld gaming system with color, but the economy wasn't great and they went monochrome. Even the CPU which was a LR35902 was chosen due to cost. Nintendo had used the equivalent of a 3502 for both the NES and SNES, but what was in the Gameboy was a copycat Z80, which in itself was a copycat Intel 8080. Where as the Switch 2 is built on Nvidia's SoC, which can't be cheap. If Nintendo wanted to keep the Switch 2 affordable during what is probably an economic depression, then maybe something like a MediaTek or Broadcom based chip would have been better?

View: https://youtu.be/9Ki-kH751_8?t=596

 

[LukeTbk]

Where as the Switch 2 is built on Nvidia's SoC, which can't be cheap. If Nintendo wanted to keep the Switch 2 affordable during what is probably an economic depression, then maybe something like a MediaTek or Broadcom based chip would have been better?

200mm of very old Samsung 8 with a very old Ampere Nvidia soc is probably relatively cheap (but still big at 200mm) and would not surprise me if Nvidia helped with the switch 1 translation layer (translating maxwell miocrode into ampere one, PTX level) to have a nice at launch switch 1 title support. Not sure how well emulation would have run on a mediatek GPU

Also, maybe not fully unrelated the volume they were able to have going with old Nvidia-samsung stuff, feel like the first launch in forever with zero stock issue.

I never said the Switch 2 would fail, just not be as successful as the Switch 1

considering the switch could very well end up the most sold gaming system of all time (getting close to the PS2...), that really a mild statement, a bit like taking the field in a bet of all the console ever launched vs a single one.

 

[Aurelius]

I never said the Switch 2 would fail, just not be as successful as the Switch 1. The only people who would consider this a failure are the shareholders, who are quick to sell Nintendo to Microsoft and Sony if it meant better stock returns. Pricing a game console and it's games are always a delicate matter that requires consideration of the economy. Nintendo during the 80's knew this better than anyone when making the Gameboy. Nintendo could have made this into a powerful handheld gaming system with color, but the economy wasn't great and they went monochrome. Even the CPU which was a LR35902 was chosen due to cost. Nintendo had used the equivalent of a 3502 for both the NES and SNES, but what was in the Gameboy was a copycat Z80, which in itself was a copycat Intel 8080. Where as the Switch 2 is built on Nvidia's SoC, which can't be cheap. If Nintendo wanted to keep the Switch 2 affordable during what is probably an economic depression, then maybe something like a MediaTek or Broadcom based chip would have been better?

View: https://youtu.be/9Ki-kH751_8?t=596

Nintendo only announced the Switch 2 in April — it couldn't possibly have anticipated the economic turmoil that arguably began the same month. Console hardware development usually takes years. The Gameboy took two years, so why would a much more advanced system take less time to complete?

Don't forget that NVIDIA's underlying SoC is from 2023. Likely not dirt cheap, but it also isn't some heavily customized part built using the latest architectures and manufacturing processes. And switching from NV to, say, MediaTek would have created lots of compatibility headaches with older Switch games.

 

[rinaldo00]

I never said the Switch 2 would fail, just not be as successful as the Switch 1.

True, I exaggerated for the effect.