Circana: Xbox Series console sales fell 70% YoY to an all-time low in November, compared to the PS5's 40% YoY drop and Switch 1 and 2's combined 10% YoY fall
Down again. — This morning, we learned that November was a surprisingly bad month for video game spending across the board.
Context & Ripple Effects
The November result sits within a broader holiday-hardware contraction: Circana had already reported a 27% drop in US console spending for the month. The divergence matters because Xbox's decline was materially steeper than those of its two principal console rivals.
Later coverage showed Nintendo's newer hardware led US hardware sales in December and across 2025, while Microsoft's subsequent quarterly results recorded another sharp Xbox hardware decline. Together, the reports distinguish a weak market from Xbox's relatively weaker console position.
First-order effects
- Microsoft faces the most acute immediate hardware-sales setback among the three platform holders, as Xbox Series demand fell far faster than PS5 and the combined Switch family in the key holiday-shopping month.
- The results reinforce that November's spending weakness was market-wide, but the smaller declines for PlayStation and Switch hardware leave their retail positions comparatively less impaired.
Second-order effects
- Retailers and hardware partners have a clearer incentive to prioritize PlayStation and Nintendo inventory, merchandising, and promotions where demand is holding up better; Xbox may need stronger value propositions to compete for shelf space and consumers' budgets.
- Xbox's weaker console sell-through can constrain the near-term installed-base opportunity for game and service sales, consistent with the later decline in Microsoft's Xbox hardware and content-and-services revenue.
Third-order effects
- If disproportionate Xbox hardware weakness persists beyond a single holiday month, console competition may increasingly turn on software and service reach rather than on expanding Xbox-specific hardware ownership.
- The contrast with Switch's subsequent sales leadership suggests that a broadly soft hardware market need not affect every platform equally; product cycles and platform positioning can increasingly determine which ecosystems capture constrained spending.
The trend: The data point fits a more uneven console market in which overall hardware demand is soft, while platform-specific momentum increasingly determines who captures remaining spending.