November 2025 was an incredibly horrible month for online game gross sales in the U.S. Whereas we historically consider November as an enormous gross sales month what with Black Friday and all, November 2025 was the worst November in online game {hardware} unit gross sales, and the worst in bodily software program greenback gross sales the U.S. has seen since 1995.
That is in accordance with Circana’s month-to-month report, which paints a fairly dismal image of final month’s business efficiency. The trade in the U.S. noticed declines throughout the board in {hardware}, equipment, and console spending for an total drop of 4% year-over-year, at $5.9 billion in whole spending.
Hardware
Extra particularly, {hardware} spending was down a whopping 27% year-over-year to $695 million, the lowest {hardware} spending whole for November since 2005’s $455 million. Even worse, unit gross sales reached 1.6 million, which is the lowest November whole since 1995’s 1.4 million.
And that is consultant of declines throughout the board. Xbox Sequence {hardware} gross sales have been down 70% year-over-year. PS5 gross sales have been down over 40%, and mixed unit gross sales of Nintendo Swap and Nintendo Swap 2 have been down over 10% from Swap gross sales final yr, regardless of this being a launch yr for the Nintendo Swap 2.
What is going on on? As identified by Circana senior director Mat Piscatella, online game {hardware} has by no means been costlier, reaching an all-time November excessive of $439 per unit, up 11% year-over-year. The Xbox particularly noticed its common worth per unit improve by over 30%, maybe confirming one purpose why people aren’t so eager to purchase Xboxes particularly.
With the Nintendo Swap 2, Piscatella says he is watching its gross sales “very carefully,” and presents this evaluation of its present scenario:
With six months in the market, it stays the fastest-selling online game {hardware} in U.S. historical past. Nonetheless, a part of what was driving that was its availability to be purchased throughout its launch window. It has been extraordinarily uncommon to have such a profitable new system not endure provide constraints going into its first vacation gross sales interval. Unit gross sales of Swap 2 have been decrease than these of Swap 1 throughout every console’s first November, however the worth factors are additionally fairly totally different. The common worth paid for a brand new Nintendo Swap in November 2017 was $309 (which, if adjusted for inflation, is roughly $405 in November 2025 {dollars}), in comparison with the $486 for Swap 2 in November 2025. Maybe it’s a case of demand having been pulled ahead earlier in the yr as a result of folks may discover them. Or maybe the mass market isn’t as shortly adopting Swap 2 because it did Swap. Or maybe shoppers are trying elsewhere for vacation gifting as the costs proceed to rise in online game {hardware}. Powerful to say at the second.
There’s one piece of {hardware} that is doing okay, and it isn’t what you’d count on: the NEX Playground. It was the third best-selling piece of online game {hardware} of November by unit gross sales, surpassing the Xbox Sequence, whereas the costlier Xbox Sequence beat it in greenback gross sales (the PS5 was first in each classes, the Swap 2 was second). Piscatella calls the NEX Playground a “outstanding story,” noting that whereas everybody else is having a nasty time, it simply had an outstanding November by comparability:
November 2025 tracked unit gross sales at U.S. retailers for NEX Playground have been simply 7% beneath its whole tracked lifetime gross sales at retail via October. With a median promoting worth of simply over $200 in November, robust placement at retail, and some profitable influencer and viral advertising efforts, the NEX Playground grew to become one among the hottest online game merchandise of the vacation season throughout the month. We’ll need to see how nicely the tempo can sustain, as there are studies that the NEX Playground is now largely bought out, with secondary market costs on websites like eBay hovering accordingly.
There might be a lesson right here that extra inexpensive, household pleasant gaming gadgets carry enchantment throughout vacation gifting season.
Software
Issues aren’t trying significantly better on the content material aspect. Whereas Circana studies that content material spending was up 1% year-over-year to $4.8 billion, that is with subscription spending rising 16% and 2% progress in cellular. Physical software program gross sales, in the meantime, dropped 14% year-over-year to the worst November since 1995, the yr Circana started monitoring them.
Name of Responsibility: Black Ops 7 put the Name of Responsibility franchise again on high for one more debut month in November as the month’s best-seller, marking the 18th yr in a row a Name of Responsibility has launched to the high of the charts. That mentioned, Circana studies that the franchise noticed a double-digit proportion full recreation greenback gross sales decline when in comparison with November 2024.
It is just a little difficult to make exact comparisons between Black Ops 7 and its predecessor, Black Ops 6, given each video games launched into Xbox Game Go, and Black Ops 6 launched in October final yr, not November. Nonetheless, Piscatella tells me that Black Ops 7’s full recreation greenback gross sales completed beneath these of Black Ops 6’s final November. Moreover, Black Ops 7 is at the moment the seventh best-selling recreation of the year-to-date, and Piscatella anticipates that its rival, Battlefield 6, will finish the yr as the best-selling recreation of 2025. This is not the first time in current reminiscence it has been crushed, with Hogwarts Legacy popping out on high in 2023. Notably, that yr, Hogwarts Legacy beat Name of Responsibility Trendy Warfare 3, which did not launch into Game Go, whereas Black Ops 7 this yr did, nearly actually making its precise greenback gross sales whole decrease because of this.
It is value noting as nicely that equipment spending was down 13% year-over-year.
Pink Flags
That is shaping as much as be a fairly bizarre yr. I requested Piscatella what he makes of all this, and what it means for the video games trade. He identified that a lot of the story stays to be advised in December, and that it is potential shoppers are ready for higher offers nearer to the holidays. Alternatively, it is potential that financial elements and worth of consoles are pushing folks to carry off on gaming purchases. This is what Piscatella needed to say:
Retail spending had been holding up comparatively nicely till now, regardless of the stress from greater costs we have been seeing in the market. Extra prosperous shoppers have stored on spending thus far, which has made up for a few of the declines in spending from the much less prosperous parts of the market. Maybe this can be a signal that these greater costs are starting to impression purchases of pricier gadgets, like consoles. Maybe not.
Nonetheless, if the crunch on RAM pricing continues, if we see rising costs on consoles and gaming PCs over the coming months it may, theoretically, be probably devastating to the devoted gaming system market. Which might, after all, have potential carryover results on the content material aspect.
I actually see a few of the relationships between {hardware} unit gross sales and pricing we’re seeing in the November outcomes as a pink flag.
We can’t get the December and full-year outcomes in till January, which is able to inform us much more about whether or not the video games trade is about to enter a lean interval, or if this November was only a goofy one-off.
November 2025 U.S. High 20 Finest-Promoting Video games:
- Name of Responsibility: Black Ops 7 (NEW)
- Battlefield 6
- NBA 2K26
- Madden NFL 26
- EA Sports activities FC 26
- Pokemon Legends: Z-A*
- Ghost of Yotei
- EA Sports activities School Soccer 26
- Minecraft*
- Kirby Air Riders (NEW)*
- Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment (NEW)*
- The Outer Worlds 2
- Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
- Donkey Kong Bananza*
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Pink Lifeless Redemption II
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Borderlands 4
- Forza Horizon 5
- Digimon Story: Time Stranger
* Signifies that some or all digital gross sales should not included in Circana’s knowledge. Some publishers, together with Nintendo, don’t share sure digital knowledge for this report.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Acquired a narrative tip? Ship it to rvalentine@ign.com.