Xbox Sales Are Down 70% Year-Over-Year With PS5 Down 40%

If you didn’t feel the need to pick up a video game console this past year, you were certainly not alone. A new report from Circana says the gaming industry just had its worst November for console dollar sales since 2005, in a month when Black Friday is supposed to be a boon for such purchases. Physical software sales are the worst they've been since 1995.

This is spread across the board, and none of the Big Three are immune. Xbox Series X/S consoles are down a colossal 70% year over year. Sony’s PS5 is down a hefty 40%. Switch plus Switch 2 sales were down 10%, even as the Switch 2 was released this past June.

Why? While there are many reasons, a simple one is…prices high, consumer money low.

As a result of tariffs and other market conditions, the prices for new video game hardware have skyrocketed.

Xbox upped its hardware prices twice this year, with a Series S now $400-$450, depending on the model, more than a launch PS5 was. Xbox Series X is now a $600-$800 purchase.

On Sony’s end, it eventually had to follow suit. All console prices jumped $50, the PS5 Digital now $500, $100 more than it was at launch. PS5 standard is $550, and PS5 Pro is $750, coming in under the max storage Xbox Series X while having more power, but still, that’s an incredibly high price.

The Nintendo Switch 2 has not raised prices since its June launch, of course, but that console/handheld launched for $500 compared to the $300 launch price of the original Switch (though the Switch 2 is still the fastest-selling console of all time, so far).

So, many consoles are now $50-200 or so more expensive than they were five years ago in an industry where you’d usually seen unit prices go down as the generation pressed onward, and we’re now in its back half.

The other part of this is what’s going on with the economy, where prices have increased on loads of other purchases, so brand-new video game consoles may seem like a luxury item that many people are not going to bother with right now. Essentials like housing and groceries are rapidly becoming more expensive, and recent polls show that 70% of Americans say things have become too unaffordable and have a poor view of the current economy.

If you’ve watched console prices rise, the fact that these declines are happening is no great shock. We can dig more into individual stories, like Microsoft essentially running an ad campaign to tell people they don’t need to own Xboxes in favor of subscription services, but the larger picture here is broad-scale economics, and it’s unlikely to change any time soon.

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Otherwise several Nintendo Titles

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