// GAMESPOT — GAMING
US Video Game Hardware Sales Just Had Their Worst August In 13 Years
Video game console sales in the US hit their worst August in 13 years, as Circana's Mat Piscatella revealed that hardware sales fell 15% from a year ago to 559,000 units. This is the lowest August total since 2013 (423,000 units), with PlayStation sales down 11% year-over-year, Xbox unit sales down 31% year-over-year (the lowest August total since 2020), and Nintendo unit sales down 15% compared with August 2025.
The silver lining (for the companies making these machines) is that higher hardware prices have pushed the average price from $476 in 2025 to $541 in 2026, meaning consumers are paying more for fewer machines on the market. Several factors are at play: current console prices are at historical highs, not lows, driven by global component pressure and mid-gen hardware upgrades like the $900 PS5 Pro, which pushes average prices up.
Basically, consumers are buying fewer units because the entry barrier is much higher than in past console cycles. After six years, market saturation has also likely set in for the Xbox Series X|S and PS5, and hardware price increases implemented earlier in 2026 triggered a massive buying wave to get ahead of the price hikes. That led to frontloaded demand and drained potential summer console purchases, but for Sony, dollar sales actually grew 17% year-on-year due to higher-tier hardware models, even as unit volume dropped 11%.
Historically, August 2013 can also be seen as the twilight phase of the PS3 and Xbox 360 era. It's a tale as old as time, as 13 years ago, gamers were saving their cash and preparing to invest in a PS4 or an Xbox One ahead of their November 2013 launch. We're not seeing that with this console generation, as no successor machines have been officially unveiled and hardware sales have slowed despite the mid-generation push.
When it came to games, NBA 2K27 was unsurprisingly the best-selling game of August, and it's the third-best-selling game of 2026 so far. Madden NFL 27 was the second-best-selling game of August, and thanks to a Switch 2 port, Elden Ring finished August as the seventh-best-selling game that month (and up from 41 in July). Piscatella noted that 2026 year-to-date spending on new physical software has also increased by 5% when compared to a year ago, up to $738 million. Spending on Switch 2 Game-Key Card physical releases has also risen 631%, which has offset a 3% drop in spending across all other new physical media types.
Traditional discs and full-data cartridges continue their steady multi-year decline as more players switch directly to digital storefronts, but because Game-Key Cards were a smaller segment of the physical market in 2025, major publishers' sudden adoption in 2026 drove that massive percentage jump. That added enough dollar volume to pull total physical software spending into positive territory (+5% overall to $738M), further obscuring the ongoing drop in traditional disc/cartridge media.
Total content spending also fell 10% year-over-year to $3.8 billion, bringing year-to-date content spending down 2% to $32.2 billion. Mobile saw the biggest drop, with spending down 18% year-over-year, while console spending fell 7% year-over-year. But PC gaming? It was an anomaly: spending on that platform grew 13% year-over-year, and subscription purchases also rose 3%.