Xbox Hits an All-Time Low and PlayStation Its Worst Year Since 2013: The Console Price Crisis (2026)

Eight months into 2026, the console business in the United States is shrinking in a way it has not shrunk in a generation. According to Circana's US retail tracking, Xbox hardware unit sales are down 33% year-to-date through August, an all-time low for the platform. PlayStation is down 25%, its weakest showing since 2013. The firm's senior director, Mat Piscatella, went further than the numbers when he shared them: the US hardware market, he said, has not been in a more precarious position since the early 1980s.

That is not a casual comparison. The early 1980s is the crash of 1983, the collapse that nearly ended home video games in North America. Nobody serious thinks 2026 is a rerun of that. But the reason an analyst would reach for it says a lot about what is happening now.

The price is the story

The detail that explains everything else is not a sales figure. It is a price tag. Circana says the average American buyer paid $529 for a new Xbox so far this year, 26% more than a year ago, and $597 for a PlayStation, up 20%. Both are all-time US highs. "Price sensitivity is becoming a real problem," Piscatella said.

Consoles historically get cheaper as a generation ages. That was the bargain at the heart of the business: buy early and pay a premium, or wait and get the same machine for less. This generation has broken that rule twice. First came tariffs and inflation, which pushed list prices up in 2025. Now comes memory. The component shortage driven by AI data centers buying up RAM and storage has made the parts inside a console more expensive in the sixth year of its life than in the first. Manufacturers have passed the cost on, and buyers have answered by not buying.

August alone shows the pattern. US hardware unit sales fell 15% from a year earlier, to the weakest August since 2013. PlayStation units were down 11%, Xbox 31% and Nintendo 15%. Even the Switch 2, the newest machine on the market, is not immune.

Why 2013 is the right comparison

The year that keeps appearing in these numbers is more useful than 1983. In 2013 the PS3 and Xbox 360 were at the very end of their lives, and the market was waiting for the PS4 and Xbox One to launch that November. Sales were low because everyone knew something new was coming.

2026 has the low sales without the excuse. The next PlayStation and Xbox are not expected until late 2027 at the earliest, and the current machines are not being phased out. People are not waiting for a new console. They are deciding the one in the store costs too much. That is a much harder problem to fix, because a launch fixes the first and only a price cut fixes the second, and a price cut is exactly what the component market will not allow.

Xbox has a second problem

Price explains why everyone is down. It does not explain why Xbox is down further. The answer is a strategy Microsoft chose on purpose. Over the past two years Xbox has moved its biggest games to PlayStation and PC, built Game Pass into a service that runs on almost anything with a screen, and told players that the console is one way to play among many. We argued when Gears of War: E-Day launched that even the series most tied to the Xbox brand no longer gives anyone a reason to buy the box.

The sales data is that argument expressed as a number. If the games are everywhere, the hardware becomes optional, and optional purchases are the first ones people drop when prices climb. An all-time low for Xbox hardware is not a sign that the strategy failed. It may be a sign that it worked, and that Microsoft is now finding out what a platform holder looks like when its own platform is the least important part of the plan.

PlayStation is in a different position but not a comfortable one. Sony's console has the exclusives and the installed base. It also has the highest average price on the market, and its weakest year for units in more than a decade. As we noted at the PS5's anniversary, the machine has spent much of its life trailing the PS4's pace. Higher prices late in the cycle make that gap wider, not narrower.

Everyone is waiting for November

Piscatella ended his thread with the only hopeful line available: the release of what he called the Big Video Game in November may help. Grand Theft Auto VI is the most anticipated release of the decade and the kind of game that historically moves hardware on its own. Retailers have already warned that consoles could sell out over the holidays.

But a sell-out caused by scarce stock and a sales recovery caused by demand are different things, and the first can hide the second. If consoles vanish from shelves in December because of GTA VI, the headline will be a shortage. The more important number will come in January, when Circana reports whether the year's slide was a pause or a new floor. A game, however big, can bring people into the store. It cannot change what the machine costs when they get there.