Spending on video game hardware during November totalled $695 million, a drop of 27 percent compared to last year, according to market analyst company Circana, “This is the lowest video game hardware spending total for a November month since the $455M reached during the November 2005 tracking period,” Circana says. In addition, 1.6 million units of hardware were sold in the US in November, which is “the lowest total for a November month since 1995 (1.4 million).”
The rising costs of consoles probably didn’t help. The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series of consoles both turned five in November, but customers looking to pick up one of the consoles brand new are having to grapple with higher prices following price hikes this year. Those hikes have led to an “all-time November high” for the average price paid for a new unit of video game hardware of $439, Circana says — a number that’s up 11 percent from 2024. (In November 2019, the average price was $235, according to Circana analyst Mat Piscatella.)
In November, the PlayStation 5 was the month’s best-selling hardware, “in both units and dollars,” which happened for the first time since the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2, according to Circana. The Switch 2 was 2nd in both units and dollars. The Nex Playground was 3rd in terms of units sold, but the Xbox Series consoles ranked 3rd in dollars.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was the best-selling game of the month, but the Call of Duty franchise experienced “a double-digit percentage full game dollar sales decline when compared to November 2024.” Activision announced last week that it would be switching up its Call of Duty release strategy to not release Modern Warfare or Black Ops games back-to-back anymore.