I think all consoles going to struggle it seems we are in decline. Ps5 should be doing much better because Xbox is basically dead.

I was just looking at the weekly hardware chart https://www.vgchartz.com/tools/hw_date.php
and I think this might be the weakest console holiday since 2014's holiday (click All to see the trends).

Oof. I guess everyone was way off the mark for November. Last November we had:

PS5: 1331k
NSW: ~1035k
XBS: 942k

That gives us an upper limit of each system for this November of:

PS5: 1064k
XBS: 584k
NSW: <584k (XBS>NSW in units for Nov. '23)

That means that the "over 20% down YoY" was more like at least 44% down YoY for the Switch.

My own predictions over on IB were:

[PS5] 1400K
[XBS] 800K
[NSW] 750K

I wonder how much of this was because of Cyber Monday being in the December period. Anyone recall of the top of their heads which sale period previous CMs occurred in?

Historically speaking, the state of the economy seems to have no bearing on the health of the video games market. The U.S. console market hit its all-time peak during the Great Recession, with over 34M hardware units being sold in the U.S. in both 2008 & 2009 between the Wii, 360, PS3, PS2, DS, and PSP (2007 had HW sales over over 30.5M, making it the third-largest year). The market hasn't exceeded 17M HW units in a year since 2012.

Granted, most of that variability has been on Nintendo's end. PlayStation & Xbox have been far more stable, having maintained a combined lifetime total of between 60-70M per generation since Gen 6. Meanwhile, Nintendo went from the DS & Wii (95.3M lifetime combined) to 3DS & Wii U (~28.7M lifetime combined), and now they're running on generational cycles that start and end in the middle of the life cycles of PlayStation & Xbox, which limits the maximum potential of any given year.

Still, it doesn't appear that economic conditions have any effect on console sales. There's been several other smaller recessions since game consoles have existed, and they didn't have any measurable impact on sales. Inflation has higher than it is now in the late 80s (peak NES years) and from Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2008 (when hardware sales overall were entering their aforementioned all-time peak).

In any case, this isn't the first time a strong non-holiday period (which this year's one was) was followed by a lackluster holiday season. We've had unusually weak Novembers followed by strong Decembers, and strong Novembers followed by weak Decembers. It's entirely possible that with Cyber Monday numbers being part of the December period, December could have a better showing and make up for the rough November.

Besides, PS5 sales were up by about 37% YoY for the Jan.-Oct. period this year, enough to offset declines in XBS sales in the same period, giving the two systems combined sales about 8% higher than last year, so clearly something else is going on besides economic woes. It is worth noting that Black Friday deals for consoles are nowhere near as aggressive as they were last generation, so that could be a factor. The PS5 & Series X have been $500 since they launched, with nary any price cuts, even temporarily for the holidays. They could very well be exhausting their sale potential at that price point. We are after all already three years into the current generation (time flies, doesn't it?).

Also, the Switch is closing in on the end of its life, so declines like this are not entirely unexpected. Estimates indicate that Q3 2023 was the Switch's worst quarter yet in the U.S., down by over 30% YoY. It was down over 42% YoY in November in Japan as well. So it being down by at least 44% in November in the U.S. probably wasn't totally unexpected. Everybody was expecting big drops, just not that big, maybe 25-30%. The sixth year in a row of the MK8 bundle and a Smash bundle thrown in for good measure just isn't going to hit as hard. The system is reaching saturation. It wouldn't surprise me if 2024 is its lowest year even before the Switch 2 is released (whenever that is; wouldn't surprise me if they go back to a November release).

Last year CM was December too. Of course, they had GOW Ragnarok and Pokémon in November, though.

While it looks like sales this month were better in Europe it's still rough for sales to be like this in the most important market. Xbox in particular is looking awful and while stuff like COD on Game Pass will help starting next year that can only do so much. Switch might at last be reaching that fabled cliff but that's not a big deal since the successor should be at most 11 months away and PS5 while significantly below expectations is still selling well. If this continues into 2024 this could end up being its peak year though. At least the GTA 6 trailer will help December be better for it and Xbox.

Thank you for that, you were very informative and it was a joy to read. :)

So why don't Sony and Microsoft lower their prices to $400 or $350? Sony and Microsoft understand that their consoles dont make a lot of money (in terms of profit), but their games make so much profit fort them. Sony and Microsoft when they first started selling the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S was selling them at a loss, in fact Microsoft still sells them at a loss (-$200 in profit per console). They make so much more in subscriptions, games, controllers, etc.
Nintendo is not a price cut kind of company, though they do have a good deal every once in a blue moon.

Should we expect to see some huge holiday discounts for Nintendo and Sony?
We've already seen Costco Xbox Series prices, and wow that's crazy low.

The Switch outsold the Xbox 360 in the US in November. I've gone and adjusted our Xbox 360 estimates (and PS3 estimates) in the US, so the Switch is now ahead of it in the US. There was recent data that showed NPD/Circana adjusted their US figures for the 7th generation down (~2% for the X360 and ~0.75% for the PS3). I did them through the available date, but didn't go beyond that. Lifetime Xbox 360 and PS3 sales remain the same as before. So what I adjusted down in the US I adjusted up in RoW. 

It's going to be interesting to see if we are entering a down period for the console business and people are cutting back on having to have a game console after a boom period during COVID and now having to deal with sky high interest rates and inflation.

Going to be very interesting if Nintendo can replicate the early sales success of the Switch 2 next year.

Furukawa better have been running a tight ship in regards to Switch 2 software development the last 3 years or so because they could be launching into rough seas economy wise. I said it before but coming out of COVID (spring  2021-ish), I would insisted on Mario Kart Next, Next 3D Mario, and the Next Smash Brothers all having to be in hard development then. So that by 2024 it should be 3 years of hard development time and "planning" should have been happening before then.

It's like a coach of a sports team, you got to have your team prepared and ready to play and fired up to play even before a big game.  

GTA6 will probably save ps5 from a bad economy switch 2 will be interesting as well, it gonna be interesting to see how the continuation of hybrid approach.

Dreadful results.

Between PC's growth, GTA6 and MH Wilds not making 2024, and the looming economic crisis... Xbox is in serious trouble, and PS5 is about to experience a significant decline next year.