The fault is prices that are increasing instead of decreasing
In the Circana report published by analyst Mat Piscatella (reported by IGN), the conclusion is stark to say the least. Never before have so few consoles been sold during the month of November in 30 years in the United States. Compared to last year alone, there has been a drop in spending in this sector of almost 27%, with 1.6 million machines sold. The industry has never fallen this low since 1.4 million consoles sold in 1995. The PS5 notes a 40% drop in sales from one year to the next, but it’s not as much as the Xbox Series which is in free fall -70%.
However, with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, which had a historic launch, this observation could seem surprising, even if sales are slowing down due to a high price. Without forgetting the surprise success of this end of year in the United States, the NEX Playground, a machine which offers lots of family mini-games and which is a hit, to the point of being sold more than the Xbox Series in recent weeks.
And Things aren’t going much better in terms of physical game sales, down 14%.again to reach a level not seen since November 1995. Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 helped to boost the results a little by ranking first in sales this month, but this episode does not create as much spark as the previous opuses. A situation which is partly explained by the state of the American economy, which is facing a crisis since the implementation of the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. Priority is no longer necessarily given to games and consoles, while the prices of other materials (like RAM) increase. This assessment must still be completed with the month of December to have a broader analysis of the year which has just passed.