US Sales: November 2025 (Circana)

[Wman1996]

HyrulianScrolls said:

Just depressing that we hit a 30 year low here. I think we’re finally starting to see the real effects of the way Gen alpha (and younger Gen Z) have basically abandoned console gaming for pc gaming. I’m genuinely worried for the survival of console gaming in 15 years or so. Which as a life long console gamer who vastly prefers it to pc gaming for a whole host of reasons, sucks hard to think about.

With all of that said though, I do think Nintendo was perfectly poised to have a massive holiday with S2 if they had tried whatsoever on the software end. It’s absolutely absurd to me they expected a Hyrule Warriors and Kirby Air Riders game to be the exclusives that would sell their new hardware for its first holiday season. That should’ve been their first party exclusives holiday lineup last year for Switch 1 on its death bed, not for their shiny new successor. 

I do think it's for a few reasons.

1. The rise of PC gaming

2. Uncertainty in the USA with tariffs and such. The USA is not in a recession or worse yet, but a good chance it could happen in 2026 or 2027.

I suppose it could also be the software libraries for PS5 even though it's been out for 5 years, but I doubt it. Nintendo is banking hard on Mario Kart World to sell units this holiday even though it was a launch title. If we only look at November and December, Nintendo's first-party offerings are less than I would've expected when Switch 2 was announced (but not unveiled yet) this year. 

Hyrule Warriors and Metroid Prime 4 are mostly for core gamers. Kirby Air Riders will obviously be successful to say the least, but it's no Animal Crossing or Super Smash Bros. And it sure isn't 3D Mario or 3D Zelda but I didn't expect those anyway. Well, once DK was announced I more or less figured 3D Mario had no chance of coming out before Holiday 2026.