This morning, we learned that November was a surprisingly bad month for video game spending across the board. Hardware dollar sales and physical software unit sales were both at the lowest we've seen since 1995, and all three major console makers were down year-on-year in what's traditionally the biggest month for retail. But one console in particular is really struggling, and that's the Xbox.
According to Circana senior director Mat Piscatella speaking to IGN, Xbox Series consoles dollar sales were down a whopping 70% year-over-year. That's… a huge drop. Other consoles were also down, with PS5 down 40% year-over-year, and the newly-released Nintendo Switch 2 combined with Switch 1 down 10% from sales of Switch 1 only last year, which is pretty shocking on its own.
But that Xbox number is rather astounding. In fact, it's an all-time low for Xbox console unit sales in a November month in the U.S., says Piscatella. Admittedly, Xbox has some factors working against it. As we've already laid out, it's a really bad month for hardware sales across the board. Also, the Xbox Series is now five years old, and with no new hardware refresh this year, there are fewer and fewer reasons to be getting one if you haven't already sprung for an Xbox. In fact, Xbox hardware sales have been in decline for a bit now in the U.S. at least in the busy retail month of November. From 2023 to 2024, Xbox Series sales in November dropped 29%, and from 2022 to 2023, there was a drop of over 20%. 2022 was the last November when unit sales were up, Piscatella tells me, specifically up 11% year-over-year from November 2021.
Critically, though, for 2025, the Xbox is expensive, especially in the US. Piscatella points out to us that its average price per unit rose by over 30% year-over-year. That's because of multiple price hikes in recent years, including some seriously massive ones in September that impacted all types of Xbox Series consoles, raising prices from as little as $20 for Series S to as much as $70 for the Series X 2TB Galaxy Special Edition. And that's after a price hike in May that raised consoles as little as $80 for the Series S and as much as a stunning $130 for the Galaxy Edition. An Xbox Series S, the cheapest of all modern Xbox hardware available now, released at $300 retail, and now costs $400.
And it only goes up from there. There are now rumors and concerns circulating that Xbox may soon raise prices yet again due to skyrocketing prices for RAM, driven by the growth of generative AI. The existing price hikes are happening at least in part due to U.S. tariffs imposed on countries where gaming hardware is manufactured, and while the confusion and uncertainty around what these tariffs would actually be has settled somewhat, the reality of the tariffs themselves has not. Nor is it impossible that those tariffs could shift again in the coming months. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy is just generally in rough shape according to basically everyone, with high consumer debt, high inflation, few new jobs, and an increasing unemployment rate. If everyone is worried they can't buy groceries, who's buying a console right now?
While both PlayStation and Nintendo Switch are seeing the impacts of a lot of these same problems, their price hikes have not been nearly as drastic in response. PS5s went up $50 earlier this year, and Nintendo opted to jack up prices on its original Switch and accessories while keeping its new console at the already admittedly higher-than-expected price it was originally set at, for now. Ultimately, this puts the Xbox Series S, and the PS5 All-Digital Edition at $400, and the Nintendo Switch 2 at $450 before sales and discounts. Is it any wonder that people are skipping buying consoles entirely or, if they're buying one at all, they're shelling out $50 more for the brand new one? Or, that if they're shopping for a kid, they're spending $200 on a NEX Playground, which outsold the Xbox Series console in November?
All this amounts to is that everyone is struggling, but the Xbox Series – a console that has largely given up on the idea of exclusives and keeps raising prices repeatedly – is struggling the most. Piscatella tells me that Xbox's hardware sales peak, at least for November, is far behind it, peaking in November 2011, with its second-highest November ever in 2014. If even big day one Game Pass games like Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 aren't moving the needle to help Xbox hardware regain its former glory, what will?
Xbox, at least, doesn't want to give up on hardware, or so it says. Just this past October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was on record essentially hinting that there would indeed be another new Xbox console eventually, but that it would basically be a PC/console hybrid. At the same time, the company is actively hoping to leave behind big exclusives in favor of a multi-platform strategy. It's already there, in fact, releasing and announcing several major first-party games on PlayStation not too long after their Xbox debuts, and pondering even more. Xbox hardware sales may be floundering, but perhaps a better question to ask is whether or not that matters to Xbox anymore.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
