Online game console gross sales within the US had one in every of its worst Novembers ever in 2025, in keeping with a brand new report.
There have been a complete of simply 1.6 million consoles offered throughout the US in November this 12 months, which is usually a time of 12 months when gross sales are highest due to Black Friday reductions and the upcoming vacation season. However the elevated costs of consoles could also be driving this downward development.
The typical worth paid for a console in November 2025 was $439, which is the very best it’s ever been. That is brought on by a variety of elements, like producers rising costs all year long as a consequence of issues like tariffs within the US, and an total enhance within the worth of RAM. Irrespective of the rationale, it’s a tough look.
The chart illustrates a disturbing development within the common promoting worth of consoles, and the information on {hardware} models offered paint an identical image. Circana’s Mat Piscatella detailed the findings and remarked that “correlation doesn’t essentially suggest causation…except it does.”
2025’s $439 common compares scarily to 2019’s $235, when 3.9 million consoles had been offered. The COVID-19 pandemic has probably had an antagonistic impact total on every little thing since then, too, however this 12 months has been an ideal storm of unhealthy information in relation to the promoting of {hardware}.
Even with gross sales, the bottom PS5 console is $449 proper now. The Xbox Sequence X is marked down (yeah, you learn that proper) to $599. The Nintendo Swap 2, which launched in June, is holding regular proper on the common with its $449 MSRP. Gaming just isn’t an inexpensive interest.
Yr-over-year, online game {hardware} spending was down 27 p.c from November 2024, whereas spending on equipment was down 14 p.c. It paints a bleak image, particularly since what is probably going the most important sport of our lifetime but was delayed out of its unique launch window of this 12 months. Grand Theft Auto 6 is now scheduled to drop on Nov. 19, 2026, so hopefully this time subsequent 12 months the charts shall be wanting fairly completely different.
