Not to be a "concern troll"... but with the release of Circana's January 2026 data, I have made a slightly worrying observation pertaining to the direction of the gaming console industry SPECIFICALLY in the U.S. The following observations come from VGChartz estimated data:
- In January 2018, there were ~779 thousand gaming consoles sold in the U.S. across the four biggest systems (246k NS1 + 215k PS4 + 206k XBSXS + 111k 3DS).
- In January 2026, there were ~467 thousand gaming consoles sold in the U.S. across the four biggest systems (179k NS2 + 188k PS5 + 72k XBSXS + 28k NS1).
That is a 40.1% drop in hardware sales between generations. [Edit— PLEASE read Zippy's comment below for context: Turns out that we're comparing 5w against 4w. That changes a lot.] And this trend doesn't just exist in January alone— holiday sales figures were also significantly subdued when comparing November & December 2017 against 2025 (4.36M+4.50M v. 1.39M+2.46M) (-68.1% & -45.3%). And glancing at other January data, the trend remains present: ~694 thousand in January 2019, ~650 thousand in January 2020, ~837 thousand in January 2021, ~944 thousand in January 2022, ~926 thousand in January 2023, ~893 thousand in January 2024, and ~491 thousand in January 2025.
Compared to JP and EU data, one would see a totally different story, as PS5 & NS2 soared to near-record highs in their respective regions, each performing similarly/better than when compared to 2017 data.
That all being said: While the immediate conclusion to draw from this data might be that a large portion of U.S. consumers are finally beginning to be "priced out" of the gaming market, this fails to account for the fact that the U.S. economy has actually seen larger growth in consumer purchasing power than JP and EU, from what I can gather. (This is one source I'm seeing, though I must confess that I'm not the most informed on these economic matters— perhaps somebody a bit more educated on this could corroborate or refute this claim.)
So... what's the deal? The industry as a whole continues to grow from the perspective of revenue— perhaps console developers simply don't care about selling the most systems, but raking in the most profits per system of hardware sold? Could Roblox (among other F2P games which anyone can play on even the weakest of PCs) be a potential cause for this?
Last edited by firebush03 - 1 day ago
