Thursday, December 18th 2025
US Gaming Hardware Sales Reach 35-Year Low As Prices Soar
Ask any gamer, and you'll hear anecdotes of sky-high hardware prices, especially with the recent developments in the system memory market, but now we also have data to back up those conclusions, thanks to Matt Piscatella and Circana Retail Tracking Service. Piscatella, the Senior Director and Video Game Industry Thought Leader at Circana, recently posted a graph on Bluesky revealing the average monthly US video game hardware unit sales and sale price per unit in November of every year starting in 1995.
According to the data, gaming hardware sales are at the lowest they've been since November 1995, sitting at 1.6 million sales, down from 3.39 million units in November 2019. Meanwhile, the average price per unit is at an all-time high, with the price per unit coming in at $439, up from a mere $235 in November 2019. Compared to November 2024 alone, video game hardware spending declined by a whopping 27%, compared to a 1% increase in sales volume for gaming content and a 13% decline in video game accessory sales. The year-over-year sales reportedly still saw a 10% increase. It's worth noting that this data isn't necessarily representative of global sales or pricing trends, since only US sales were measured. At the same time, it seems as though subscriptions are paying off, with the data analyst claiming a 16% increase in subscription spending since November 2024. In general, it seems as though gamers are spending similar amounts of money on game content as they were just a year prior.
Source:
Matt Piscatella on Bluesky
According to the data, gaming hardware sales are at the lowest they've been since November 1995, sitting at 1.6 million sales, down from 3.39 million units in November 2019. Meanwhile, the average price per unit is at an all-time high, with the price per unit coming in at $439, up from a mere $235 in November 2019. Compared to November 2024 alone, video game hardware spending declined by a whopping 27%, compared to a 1% increase in sales volume for gaming content and a 13% decline in video game accessory sales. The year-over-year sales reportedly still saw a 10% increase. It's worth noting that this data isn't necessarily representative of global sales or pricing trends, since only US sales were measured. At the same time, it seems as though subscriptions are paying off, with the data analyst claiming a 16% increase in subscription spending since November 2024. In general, it seems as though gamers are spending similar amounts of money on game content as they were just a year prior.
37 Comments on US Gaming Hardware Sales Reach 35-Year Low As Prices Soar
The only options we're going to have is look for used deals, find cheap SODIMMs and use RAM adapters, or have access to a store selling bundle deals.
IDC expects OEM sales are going to be down by at least 4.9% in the OEM market, it can't be good for the DIY market either as no one has reason to buy parts or build a PC unless they already have RAM or managed to buy RAM before prices skyrocketed.
wccftech.com/you-might-need-to-say-goodbye-to-affordable-pcs/
I think 16GB or 32GB is enough, but I definitely regret not buying an extra kit, or a spare SSD since prices on those are being driven up.
Mario Kart World has already sold over 10 million units, DK Bananza is over 3.5 million. Cyberpunk 2077 is selling very well on the NS 2.
What is your point about Mario kart world being the biggest game on the NS2? Mario Kart 8 is the best-selling title on the Nintendo Switch, same on the Wii U I believe. In fact Mario kart has always been a top five best-selling game on Nintendo hardware, at least in terms of first party titles are concerned.
But have you noticed the pattern? You're primarily talking about first party Nintendo exclusives. If anything it's been a recurrent topic in the news how hard it's been to secure a NS2 devkit and go most games are still being made with the NS1 in mind.
It's a slow start, not that it hasn't sold well. The same goes for the PS5. There just haven't been any revolutionary games thats offer a never before seen experience.
It has been said to be hard to get a NS2 dev kit, but that hasn't been really confirmed by 3rd party Publishers. Of course, most games are still being made with NS1 in mind! That is how the console market works! Do you think Publishers just immediately drop a console that has sold over 155 million units and immediately go and exclusively develop for the new console? No! Look at PS2 and PS3, a lot of developers made their games with PS2 in mind even though the game also released on the PS3. Same thing when the PS2 came out, the PSX/PSone was still a primary consideration for Publishers as it was the best-selling console of all time at that point.You haven't provided a single shred of evidence that it is a slow start. It is the fastest selling console of all time.
The Switch 2 already has over 50 games released for it. A slow start would be N64 where it took basically 3 months to have three games released in NA.
So, unless a game is revolutionary then the console would be on a slow start no matter how old it is?
DK Bananza would probably be the closest to an experience you have never seen before. Not many games are Voxel based where nearly the entire terrain is destroyable.