November 2025 was a shockingly terrible month for video game sales in the US. While we traditionally think of November as a month of huge sales, with Black Friday and all, November 2025 was the worst November for unit sales of video game hardware and the worst for software sales in physical dollar terms that the United States has seen since 1995.
That’s according to Circana’s monthly report, which paints a pretty bleak picture of last month’s commercial performance. The U.S. industry saw an overall decline in spending on hardware, accessories and consoles, resulting in an overall decline of 4% year-over-year, with total spending of $5.9 billion.
Hardware
More specifically, hardware spending fell as much as 27% year-over-year to $695 million, representing the lowest total hardware spending level in November since 2005’s $455 million. To make matters worse, unit sales hit 1.6 million, the lowest November total since 1995’s 1.4 million.
This is representative of overall declines. Xbox Series hardware sales are down 70% year-over-year. PS5 sales are down more than 40%, and combined unit sales for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 are down more than 10% compared to Switch sales last year, even though that was the launch year of Nintendo Switch 2.
What’s going on? As Circana senior director Mat Piscatella noted, video game hardware has never been more high-priced, hitting an all-time high in November of $439 per unit, up 11% year-over-year. For Xbox consoles in particular, the average unit price has increased by over 30%, which may support one of the reasons why people are not as willing to buy specific Xbox consoles.
Piscatella says that in the case of the Nintendo Switch 2, he is watching its sales “very closely” and provides the following analysis of the current situation:
After six months on the market, it remains the fastest-selling video game hardware in U.S. history. However, the deciding factor was availability for purchase during the release window. It was extremely infrequent for such a successful recent device not to experience supply constraints during the first holiday sales period. Unit sales of the Switch 2 were lower than the Switch 1 in each console’s first November, but the price points are also completely different. The average price paid for a recent Nintendo Switch console in November 2017 was $309 (which, adjusted for inflation, is approximately $405 in November 2025) compared to $486 for the Switch 2 in November 2025. Perhaps this is a case of increased demand earlier in the year because people were able to find them. Or maybe the mass market isn’t adopting the Switch 2 as quickly as the Switch. Or maybe consumers are looking elsewhere for holiday gifts as the price of video game hardware continues to rise. It’s demanding to say at the moment.
There is one piece of equipment that does well and is not what you might expect: the NEX Playground. It was the third best-selling video game hardware in November in terms of unit sales, overtaking the Xbox series, while the more high-priced Xbox series beat it in terms of dollar sales (PS5 was first in both categories, Switch 2 was second). Piscatella calls the NEX playground “a remarkable story” and notes that while everyone else is having a bad time, November, by comparison, was just great:
November 2025 tracked unit sales at U.S. retailers for NEX Playground were just 7% below total tracked retail sales for the entire period through October. With an average selling price of just over $200 in November, a robust retail presence, and some success in influencer and viral marketing, NEX Playground has become one of the hottest video game products for the holiday season this month. We’ll have to see how quickly it can keep up the momentum, as there are reports that the NEX Playground is currently largely sold out, with aftermarket prices on sites like eBay rising accordingly.
Maybe the lesson here is that cheaper, family-friendly gaming devices are popular during the holiday gifting season.
Software
In terms of content, things aren’t much better. While Circana reports content spending increased 1% year-over-year to $4.8 billion, that was with a 16% enhance in subscription spend and a 2% enhance in mobile. Meanwhile, physical software sales fell 14% year-over-year, hitting their worst November since 1995, when Circana began tracking them.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 put the Call of Duty series back on top of the charts for another debut month, becoming the month’s best-seller, marking the 18th consecutive year that Call of Duty has appeared at the top of the charts. That said, Circana reports that the franchise has seen a double-digit percentage decline in full-game dollar sales compared to November 2024.
An correct comparison between Black Ops 7 and its predecessor, Black Ops 6, is quite arduous considering both games were made available on Xbox Game Pass and Black Ops 6 was released in October last year, not November. Still, Piscatella told me that Black Ops 7’s full-game dollar sales were lower than Black Ops 6’s sales last November. Additionally, Black Ops 7 is currently the seventh best-selling game of the year, and Piscatella predicts that its rival, Battlefield 6, will end the year as the best-selling game of 2025. This is not the first time it has been defeated, with Hogwarts Legacy emerging victorious in 2023. It is worth noting that this year, Hogwarts Legacy defeated Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3, which occurred NO was made available on Game Pass while Black Ops 7 was this year, which almost certainly resulted in lower actual dollar sales.
It’s also worth noting that spending on accessories dropped 13% year over year.
Red flags
It’s going to be quite a strange year. I asked Piscatella what he thinks about all this and what it means for the gaming industry. He emphasized that many details remain to be announced in December and it is possible that consumers are waiting for better offers closer to the holidays. Alternatively, it’s possible that economic factors and the price of consoles are pushing people to hold off on game purchases. Here’s what Piscatella had to say:
Retail spending has remained relatively good so far, despite the pressure from higher prices observed on the market. More affluent consumers continue to spend, which has offset some of the decline in spending by less affluent parts of the market. Perhaps this is a sign that higher prices are starting to have an impact on purchases of more high-priced items like consoles. Perhaps not.
However, if the crash in RAM prices continues and if we see prices of gaming consoles and PCs rising in the coming months, it could theoretically have potentially disastrous consequences for the dedicated gaming hardware market. Which, of course, would have potential carryover effects on the content side.
I certainly see some of the correlation between hardware unit sales and the prices we see in November’s results as a red flag.
We won’t know the results for December and the entire year until January, which will tell us a lot more about whether the gaming industry will soon enter a lean period or if this November was just a stupid one-off event.
The 20 best-selling games in the US in November 2025:
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 (NEW)
- Battlefield 6
- NBA 2K26
- Madden NFL 26
- EA Sports FC 26
- Pokemon Legends: A*
- Yotei’s spirit
- EA Sports College Football 26
- Minecraft*
- Kirby Air Riders (NEW)*
- Hyrule Warriors: Prison Age (NEW)*
- Outer worlds 2
- Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds
- Banana Donkey Kong*
- Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
- Red Dead Redemption II
- Grand Theft Auto V
- Borderland 4
- Forza Horizon 5
- Digimon Story: Alien in Time
*Indicates that some or all digital sales are not included in Circana data. Some publishers, including Nintendo, do not provide certain digital data for this report.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Have a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
