Entertainment

US console sales at most precarious point since 1980s, Circana says

Vince MaglayaPublished 18m ago2 min readBased on 4 sources
US console sales at most precarious point since 1980s, Circana says
Photo by Zimu Li / CC BY-SA 4.0

United States console sales have fallen to their most fragile point since the early 1980s.

That assessment comes from Mat Piscatella, senior director at Circana, a retail sales tracker. He said the US console hardware market “has not been in a more precarious position” since that era, in comments reported by Video Games Chronicle.

The numbers cover the year to date through August 2026. Xbox hardware unit sales in the US were down 33% compared with a year earlier, according to Circana. PlayStation hardware unit sales were down 25% over the same period.

Those drops put both platforms at historic lows. Circana said Xbox unit sales for that eight-month stretch were an all-time low for the platform. PlayStation unit sales were at their lowest point since 2013.

Prices tell part of the story. The average price paid in the US for a new Xbox console in 2026 to the end of August was US$529, up 26% from a year ago. The average price paid for a new PlayStation was US$597, up 20%. Piscatella said both averages are at all-time highs.

Circana linked the increases primarily to component shortages caused by demand from artificial intelligence data centres. Consoles compete for many of the same parts, including RAM, the memory chips that help games run. Short supply pushes costs up.

August alone was weak. Total US video game hardware unit sales reached 559,000 units, down 15% on a year earlier, according to Piscatella’s published data. Physical games are also struggling. US physical video game dollar sales fell to an all-time July low of US$85 million, according to IGN.

What makes this stand out is how long the slide has run. Xbox US console unit sales hit an all-time November low in 2025, with dollar sales for Xbox Series consoles down 70% year on year at the time.

Attention now turns to November. Piscatella said the potential lift from Grand Theft Auto VI will depend on product availability during the RAM and component crisis. More buyers may arrive. There may not be enough consoles to meet them.

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