Some new eye-opening knowledge from Circana demonstrates the impacts of gaming {hardware} getting costlier, as over half the households who purchased gaming {hardware} not too long ago made $100,000 or extra a yr.
Extra particularly, a publish from Circana’s Senior Director Mat Piscatella on Bluesky revealed that 53% of households who purchased new online game {hardware}, just like the Nintendo Swap 2 or PS5 Professional, in This autumn 2025 made greater than $100,000 yearly. In Q1 2022, solely 40% of consumers had been above that threshold.
Conversely, poorer households are buying less gaming hardware, as these making underneath $50,000 a yr had been simply 19% of the consumers in This autumn 2025, however they had been 31% of the buyer base in Q1 2022. Basically, this knowledge exhibits that majority of shoppers shopping for new {hardware} are from a smaller, richer base.
That tracks when you think about each broader financial circumstances in america and the truth that gaming {hardware} has drastically gone up in value lately. The PS5, Nintendo Swap, Xbox Collection X, and Xbox Collection S all went up in value in 2025 regardless of shopping for practically 5 or extra years outdated.
New {hardware} just like the Nintendo Swap 2 was costlier at $450 as nicely, in comparison with the $300 the primary Nintendo Swap initially retailed for. Circana estimates that the common value of online game {hardware} was $446 in This autumn 2025.
As for the long-term results of this, Piscatella wrote he’s “anticipating {hardware} costs to maintain going up, for extra premium focused equipment to be made accessible, and for much more inventive methods of packaging video games into fancy editions at greater value factors.” Basically, a smaller however richer console gaming viewers will probably be shopping for extra.