We've been waiting to see if the steep rise in console prices will affect their sales, and we finally have the damning evidence many of us have been waiting for. 1.6 million consoles were sold in the US in November, which may sound like a lot, but it's the lowest November total the industry has collectively achieved since 1995.
That's according to the latest Circana data shared by Mat Piscatella. The PS5 was the best-selling console in the US last month, managing to outsell the Nintendo Switch 2 for the first time since its handheld hybrid competitor launched in June. This is a hollow victory, however, as the bigger picture shows a worrying trend.
Most people won't be getting new consoles this Christmas
November is usually the biggest month of the year for console sales for several reasons. Chief among them is this month in which most people do their Christmas shopping. It is also the month in which Black Friday falls. Sales of the PS5 will be driven by the $100 it has slashed the price of all its console models for its biggest sale of the year – a discount that will last until Christmas Eve.
A chart shared by Piscatella shows that November console sales have been steadily declining since 2018. It also includes an orange line representing how much the average new console cost each November from 1995 to the present. Hitting an all-time high of around $450 last month, it's perhaps surprising that people aren't buying consoles ahead of the holidays like they used to.
It took the PS5 less than five years to outsell the PS3 in the US
One console down, three to go.
There aren't even any expensive new consoles on the market this year, pulling that average up. The Switch 2 is the newest available console, and its MSRP is exactly where the average price falls. It's the Xbox Series X|S and PS5, both of which are more expensive today than when they were released five years ago, pulling that average up, and the little-known NEX Playground keeping that average under $500.
What consoles did gamers have to choose in November 1995?
To hammer home how bad the situation is, let's look at which consoles were on the market in November 1995, last November which sold fewer consoles than in November 2025. Topping the bill is the PS1, an iconic console, but unproven at the time and only two months old in the US. Its main competitor was the Sega Saturn, which had been released in the US a few months earlier, and you don't have to tell me that people weren't rushing to buy Sega's penultimate home console.
I'm going to tell you anyway – 9.26 million. That's less than the Wii U, and it's already outsold by the Switch 2.
Both the Sega Genesis and the SNES were still available, of course, but both had been on the market for years at that point and weren't selling many units. All that to say, that's the last time the industry November total came close to reaching this low, and that's in a year where we have a brand new Nintendo console that's one of the fastest selling consoles ever.
- brand
-
Sony
- Original release date
-
November 12, 2020
- Original MSRP (USD)
-
$499, €499, £449, ¥49,980 (base) // $399, €399, £359, ¥39,980 (digital),
- operating system
-
Orbis OS
- processor
-
Custom 8-core AMD Zen 2
- resolve
-
720p – 8K
