Not since Sony’s PlayStation 1 was in its nascent days has the video game industry had such a poor November of sales.
Video game hardware and physical software recorded its worst month of November sales since November 1995, according to analyst Circana’s U.S. Video Game Market report.
Circana senior director Mat Piscatella took to Bluesky to post a thread on hardware and game sales on Wednesday, noting a 14% spending decline in physical software and only 1.6 million units of hardware moved.
“Total projected spending across video game hardware, content and accessories fell 4% when compared to a year ago, to $5.9 billion,” Piscatella said online. “Hardware, accessory and console content declines drove the change.”
One small caveat is that this kind of data was not tracked until 1995. Still, hardware spending dropped by 27% compared to 2024, totaling $695 million.
The PlayStation 5 outsold its competition in November, while the Switch 2 came up in second.
And in spite of critical acclaim being lower than Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was the best-selling game in November.
