Xbox hardware is selling at its slowest pace ever in the United States, and the average price of a new console has never been higher. That is the picture from new Circana year-to-date figures that Mat Piscatella, senior director and video game industry advisor at Circana, shared on Bluesky Friday morning, along with a blunt warning about where the US hardware business stands.
Citing Circana’s US Retail Tracking Service, Piscatella wrote that for 2026 through the end of August, US Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% compared with the same stretch last year, and PlayStation hardware unit sales are down 25%. “Xbox YTD US hardware unit sales are at an all-time low, while PlayStation is at lowest point since 2013,” he wrote. Both figures count consoles sold, not dollars spent.
Record prices
Buyers who are still picking up a console are paying far more for it. According to Piscatella, the average price a US consumer paid for a new Xbox console in 2026 through August is $529, 26% higher than a year ago. The average PlayStation console sold for $597, up 20%.
“Both prices are at all-time US highs,” Piscatella wrote. “Price sensitivity is becoming a real problem.”
“Precarious”
Piscatella held out some hope for the holidays without naming the game he had in mind. “Perhaps the release of the Big Video Game in November will help ease at least some of these declines,” he wrote, a line GamesRadar+ and VGC both read as a reference to Grand Theft Auto 6. Any lift, he added, “will also depend on product availability given the RAM and component crisis. And pricing, of course.”
Then he closed the thread with the line that got the most attention: “The US hardware market has not been in a more precarious position since the early 80s.” That points back to the era of the 1983 video game crash.
Asked in replies when prices might normalize, Piscatella said he is “hoping 2028,” and that while Switch 2 is “doing fine,” recent price increases “have taken some wind out of the sails.” In a later reply he said a rebound is possible if the component crisis passes “by 2028 or so” and consoles get some price relief, “but that’s a lot of ifs and a lot of time.”
The year-to-date numbers build on Circana’s August report, which RCG covered when US console sales hit their lowest August since 2013. Piscatella said Circana’s September US results arrive October 22.
