With the help of Black Friday sales, November is usually a strong month for video game hardware and software sales. Not this year.
In fact, analytics firm Circana has revealed that November 2025 in the United States was the worst November for video game hardware unit sales and the worst for physical software dollar sales in thirty years – since way back in 1995.
Declines spanned hardware, accessories, and console spending for an overall drop of 4% year-over-year, resulting in $5.9 billion in total spending.
Hardware spending in particular was hardest hit, down 27% year-over-year to $695 million and the lowest spend since November 2005. Unit sales were even worse at just 1.6 million, the lowest since 1995’s 1.4 million.
It wasn’t even either – Xbox Series hardware sales are down 70% compared to last year, PS5 down 40% to last year, and Nintendo Switch 1 & 2 sales combined are down 10% and that’s despite this being the Switch 2 launch year and becoming the fastest-selling video game hardware in U.S. history.
Part of that is expense – video game hardware is more expensive than ever – reaching an all-time high of $439 per unit.
On the software front, content spending was up only 1% year-over-year to $4.8 billion, and that’s with subscription spending rising 16% and mobile growth of 2%. Physical software sales, meanwhile, dropped 14% year-over-year.
“Call of Duty: Black Ops 7” was the top title of the month, even as it saw a double-digit % drop in full game sales when compared to last year’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6” launch.
Source: IGN
