cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1227527/playstation-sales-just-had-its-worst-may-in-25-years-and-xbox-s-was-the-worst-ever-meanw
May 2026 U.S. Video Game Market Highlights Thread from Circana - 007 First Light and Nintendo Switch 2 Drive 3% US Video Game Spending Growth in May 2026.
May 2026 U.S. Video Game Total Spending - US video game spending reached $4.2 billion in May 2026, an increase of 3% when compared to a year ago. Year-to-date spending finished May 4% higher than 2025, at $23.0 billion.
May 2026 U.S. Projected Top 10 Best-Selling Games Ranked on Physical & Full Game Digital Dollar Sales (Excludes Mobile and Digital Add-On Content)
YTD 2026 U.S. Projected Top 10 Best-Selling Games Ranked on Physical & Full Game Digital Dollar Sales (Excludes Mobile and Digital Add-On Content)
Hardware - May 2026 hardware spending grew 38% versus a year ago, to $249M. Nintendo Switch 2 offset a 43% drop in PlayStation 5 spending (and a 58% dip in unit sales) driven by recent price increases. Xbox Series hardware spending grew 7% versus a year ago, units fell by 12%.
Hardware - Nintendo Switch 2 was again the best-selling hardware platform in both units and dollars for May and 2026 year-to-date, with PlayStation 5 placing second across both measures and time periods.
Hardware - Nintendo Switch 2 finished its first twelve months in market with a 5.9M unit US installed base. It is the 2nd fastest selling video game hardware in US tracked history (tracking begins in 1995). Only the Game Boy Advance’s 6.5M units exceeds it.
Hardware - PlayStation hardware unit sales fell to their lowest May total since May 2000, while Xbox hardware unit sales were the lowest ever recorded for a May month.
Hardware - The average price paid for a new unit of video game hardware reached $502 in May, up 14% compared to a year ago ($440). May 2026 PlayStation 5 average pricing increased by 33% versus a year ago to $672, with Xbox Series up 22%, to $524.
Hardware - June data will include the Nintendo Switch 2 launch month comparable.
Content - Content spending reached $3.8 billion in May 2026, increasing by 1% when compared to a year ago. Year-to-date content spending remained 3% ahead of 2025, at $20.4B.
Content - Console drove content spending growth in May. Total spending on console content increased by 25% compared to a year ago and is now 13% higher year-to-date. PC content (+15% versus a year ago) and subscription spending (+11%) also grew in May.
Content - 007 First Light was May’s leader in full game dollar sales, debuting as the 4th best-seller of 2026 year-to-date. It also led all titles in full game dollar sales on PlayStation platforms in the month.
Content - Launch month full game dollar sales of 007 First Light were the highest for a James Bond video game in franchise history.
Content - Forza Horizon 6 was the 2nd best-selling game of the month and finished May ranked 5th year-to-date. Forza Horizon 6 ranked 1st in May full game dollar sales on both Xbox and PC.
Content - Sensor Tower reports the top 10 mobile games in May and rank change from April as: MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga (+1), Gossip Harbor (+1), Kingshot (+1), Last War: Survival (-3), Whiteout Survival, Township, Royal Kingdom and Garena Free.
Content - “The top charts saw a major shakeup this month as Last War: Survival dropped three spots to #6, driven by a 30% month-over-month revenue drop,” said Bryan Isagholian of Sensor Tower. “This steep decline comes right after the publisher paused US ad spend in mid-April.”
Content - “Farlight Games’ newly debuted Clash of Critters proved to be a breakout newcomer, combining tower defense with cozy pet collection to secure a brief spot in the top 10 free casual games during its global launch in May,” said Isagholian of Sensor Tower.
Accessories - Accessories spending grew by 8% in May when compared to a year ago, reaching $168M.
Accessories - Racing Controller spending increased by 95% when compared to a year ago, fueled by the launch of Forza Horizon 6. The Logitech G29 Driving Force Racing Wheel was the best-selling Racing Controller of May in consumer spending.
The hell? Switch 2 has like 3 games that aren’t on the Switch 1.
Switch 2 has more exclusives in an year than PS5 has to date. 😀
The internet loves to shit on Nintendo, but they make incredible games.
Kirby Air Riders was worth every penny, I’ve waited 22 years for that sequel.
Nintendo has become an identity to many simple adults. Just like Disney.
We don’t have to insult them by calling them simple. Some people just really love Nintendo stuff and have the money to buy it. It’s not like they actually make really shitty games that you can’t understand why anyone would like them. Their other practices are what call them into question.
Y’know, I was gonna rant about how bad Nintendo’s gotten, but I figured keeping it short and sweet is better. I absolutely do insult people buying and praising Nintendo games. These are the same type of people who will turn around and say that PC gaming is too expensive, when they’ve probably spent triple that in games on the Wii, Switch, and Switch 2 now. Nintendo has become the lowest entry into the gaming ecosphere, which is sad for a number of reasons, but it has absolutely become the home for the lowest common denominator of people, where ideas from the industry at large are regurgitated with brand labels and people praise them because they haven’t seen the original form of those ideas.
Nintendo was always the lowest entry. They refused to come to the US market until Atari seppuku’d themselves and there was no competition. It has always been this way. They are family games aimed at family people. LoZ is the hardest they go into less casual gaming and its still really casual. No idea where this statement came from. They were the Marvel of videogames before Marvel earned that title for their movies.
I am a PC gamer. The only consoles I’ve purchased in the past 20 years have been Nintendo, it doesn’t take a genius to understand why.
This is the same case for pretty much every PC gamer I know IRL.
Comparing Nintendo to other game companies is like comparing ATVs to cars. They’re both still vehicles. Both have 4-wheels, an engine, gears, etc. But it would take a special kind of idiot to look at both and come to the conclusion that the only reason people buy ATV’s is because they’re too afraid or inexperienced to buy a regular car.
A PC can do anything an XBox or Playstation can do. It can not do everything a Wii or a Switch can do without some finicky emulation software and specialized hardware.
I mean sure, I guess that comparison holds up, if you completely ignore the reality of modern walled gardens, and disassociate any difference between a console, which is just hardware, the exact same shit that’s in every PC, and actual vehicles, which have different chassis, engines, suspension, tires, and controls, because they do fundamentally different things.
A Switch, Switch 2, or Wii are about as different to PCs and any machine that plays games, for that matter as a convection oven is to an air fryer. They’re the same goddamned thing, one just does it on a larger scale, has more capacity, and typically isn’t governed by the brand maker on what you can do with the damned thing.
Comparing Nintendo vs PCs to ATVs to cars is about as mentally braindead as you can possibly get. What, exactly, can a Wii or Switch do that a PC cannot? I’m presuming you’re referring to it’s gimmicks like the motion controls for the Wii, or the detachable controllers for the Switch. At least, I hope it’s the joycons, notable for their designed stickdrift failure, and Nintendo’s refusal to resolve the issue with customers.
Otherwise, I would struggle to think of anything different from the Switch when comparing it to even a Steam Deck. It certainly struggles with performance when compared to the Steam Deck. Comparing on a price point, the Switch does technically win out, but again, lowest common denominator and lowest barrier to entry in the gaming industry. What else does the switch even have, outside of people buying games because of brand appeal? Seriously, I’m genuinely struggling to think of a single point Nintendo innovates on, and it’s certainly not their games.
I could go off into a whole segment of their games, but most have, like I have said previously, been regurgitating innovations other companies and games have made.
Separately, the gimmicks the Wii and Switch have are arguably the worst parts of the console’s designs. Motion controls that are so bad they had to make an extension that slightly improves the tracking performance. Switch’s most notable feature was the two controllers that detached and could act like a single controller, or act as two half-assed controllers, so you could get stick drift on your controllers twice as fast!
Now, to address emulation; that’s the whole fucking point of emulation. You can literally do the same thing a switch can do if you emulate the software shell that the walled garden requires all games to be built within. On older consoles you could argue that games were optimized for their hardware, and ran better as a result of optimizing for the hardware, but many ports, to or from consoles have effectively proven that optimization only goes so far and hardware is a hard limitation on what can be done.
If you can emulate a console’s game, you know, the whole fucking point of a video game console, which is to play games… Kinda answers the question.
Now, as far as your anecdotal evidence of you and everyone you know owning a Switch; that honestly says more about you than it does about the Switch. I can’t imagine the mental gymnastics needed to justify paying close to half the price of a new PC at the time just for the pleasure of playing the 3d platformer, or the dungeon crawler, or the relaxing life sim game. Nope, never seen a type of game like that outside of Nintendo. Nope, only Nintendo can come up with such interesting concepts as 2D, mostly linear Metroidvania! (/s, in case your IQ is lower than the price of a secondhand DS game.)
TlDr; Either you’re a corporate plant, a braindead shill on the same level as Harman Smith, or so genuinely casual you consider FIFA to be your most niche game you play. Think for yourself, and I encourage you to actually compare a Nintendo game, and find one gameplay mechanic invented in the past 3-4 years that was actually new. And no, “throwing spheres to capture creatures” is not a new gameplay innovation.