Online game console gross sales within the US hit their worst August in 13 years, as Circana’s Mat Piscatella revealed that {hardware} gross sales fell 15% from a 12 months in the past to 559,000 items. That is the bottom August complete since 2013 (423,000 items), with PlayStation gross sales down 11% year-over-year, Xbox unit gross sales down 31% year-over-year (the bottom August complete since 2020), and Nintendo unit gross sales down 15% in contrast with August 2025.
The silver lining (for the businesses making these machines) is that greater {hardware} costs have pushed the common worth from $476 in 2025 to $541 in 2026, that means customers are paying extra for fewer machines available on the market. A number of components are at play: present console costs are at historic highs, not lows, pushed by world element stress and mid-gen {hardware} upgrades just like the $900 PS5 Professional, which pushes common costs up.
Mainly, customers are shopping for fewer items as a result of the entry barrier is far greater than in previous console cycles. After six years, market saturation has additionally doubtless set in for the Xbox Collection X|S and PS5, and {hardware} worth will increase carried out earlier in 2026 triggered a large shopping for wave to get forward of the value hikes. That led to frontloaded demand and drained potential summer season console purchases, however for Sony, greenback gross sales truly grew 17% year-on-year attributable to higher-tier {hardware} fashions, whilst unit quantity dropped 11%.
Traditionally, August 2013 will also be seen because the twilight part of the PS3 and Xbox 360 period. It is a story as previous as time, as 13 years in the past, avid gamers have been saving their money and getting ready to spend money on a PS4 or an Xbox One forward of their November 2013 launch. We’re not seeing that with this console era, as no successor machines have been formally unveiled and {hardware} gross sales have slowed regardless of the mid-generation push.
When it got here to video games, NBA 2K27 was unsurprisingly the best-selling sport of August, and it is the third-best-selling sport of 2026 to date. Madden NFL 27 was the second-best-selling sport of August, and because of a Swap 2 port, Elden Ring completed August because the seventh-best-selling sport that month (and up from 41 in July). Piscatella famous that 2026 year-to-date spending on new bodily software program has additionally elevated by 5% when in comparison with a 12 months in the past, up to $738 million. Spending on Swap 2 Recreation-Key Card bodily releases has additionally risen 631%, which has offset a 3% drop in spending throughout all different new bodily media sorts.
Conventional discs and full-data cartridges proceed their regular multi-year decline as extra gamers swap on to digital storefronts, however as a result of Recreation-Key Playing cards have been a smaller section of the bodily market in 2025, main publishers’ sudden adoption in 2026 drove that large share soar. That added sufficient greenback quantity to drag complete bodily software program spending into constructive territory (+5% general to $738M), additional obscuring the continued drop in conventional disc/cartridge media.
Whole content material spending additionally fell 10% year-over-year to $3.8 billion, bringing year-to-date content material spending down 2% to $32.2 billion. Cell noticed the largest drop, with spending down 18% year-over-year, whereas console spending fell 7% year-over-year. However PC gaming? It was an anomaly: spending on that platform grew 13% year-over-year, and subscription purchases additionally rose 3%.