The state of video game hardware continues to be somewhat bleak across the board. After falling 45% year-over-year in January, video game hardware sales fell 25% year-over-year for February 2025.
The drop from $341 million to $256 million is the “lowest February total for video game hardware sales spending since the $184 million reached in February 2020”. That, according to Circana and analyst Mat Piscatella.
When looking into specifics, the PlayStation 5 (PS5) was the best-selling console in terms of both units sold and dollar amount. The Xbox Series systems came in second in both metrics.
Moving on to accessories, that also saw a fall of 8% from $248M to $228M year-over-year. After two months of sales data, accessory spending is 18% behind 2024’s pace. A big reason for that, according to Circana’s data, is that controller spending has fallen 17% and headset spending has dropped off 25%.
As far as what remains a top seller, the PlayStation Portal’s base model was February’s best-selling accessory in terms of dollars spent.
Seeing the continued trend of falling hardware sales shouldn’t be surprising to many in, and around, the industry. It seems pretty clear that players either already have the system they want or there’s simply a desire to spend their money elsewhere as a result of increased cost of living.
It should be expected that hardware sales will get an uptick during the year when Nintendo releases its highly anticipated Nintendo Switch 2 system in the coming months.
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