US Physical Game Sales Drop to $85M in July, Circana’s Lowest Month on Record

Americans spent $85 million on new physical video games in July 2026, the lowest monthly total for boxed software since Circana‘s tracking series began in 1995. The figure caps a brutal month for the US games business: total consumer spending across content, hardware, and accessories fell 10% year over year to $4.5 billion, according to Circana’s July 2026 market highlights published August 20, 2026 by its senior director Mat Piscatella.

What remains of the physical market now runs overwhelmingly through one company. Nintendo platforms accounted for 63% of consumer spending on new physical games, with PlayStation at 32% and Xbox at just 4%. The Xbox figure arrives as Piscatella confirmed that Microsoft is no longer a participating publisher in Circana’s digital panel, leaving the market researcher projecting the company’s digital sales.

The softness runs through every category Circana tracks. Content spending fell 9% to $4.1 billion, driven mainly by lower mobile spending alongside declines in console and PC content. Accessories spending slipped 6% to $178 million, the weakest July for that segment since 2019’s $144 million. Hardware took the sharpest hit, dropping 29% to $282 million, the lowest July total since 2020, when the category managed $163 million at the height of pandemic-era supply constraints.

Hardware: Fewer Consoles at Higher Prices

The unit picture is worse than the dollar picture. Total hardware unit sales fell 39% year over year while the average selling price of a new console jumped 16% to $542, the arithmetic of an industry selling far fewer machines at meaningfully higher prices. PlayStation 5 unit sales fell 6% against July 2025, Xbox Series dropped 18%, and Switch 2 declined 51% against the tail of its own record-setting June 2025 launch.

Piscatella framed the slump as more than a difficult comparison: higher hardware prices driven by the RAM and component crisis have significantly impacted selling rates for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch 2 hardware takes a price increase on September 1, 2026. Gaming.net reported this week that the UK price rises to £419.99 on that date.

Switch 2 still led July in units sold, while PlayStation 5 led in hardware dollar sales. After 14 months on the market, Nintendo’s console is tracking 11% ahead of the time-aligned sales pace of the original Switch.

Call of Duty Ports Top a Chart Full of Debuts

Six new releases cracked July’s top 10. Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was projected as the month’s best-selling game in dollar sales on the strength of its new PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 port, and the original Black Ops received the same treatment and ranked fifth. EA Sports College Football 27 took second place; Electronic Arts‘ college football title would have claimed the top spot had its sales been combined with the EA Sports MVP Bundle (2026). The month’s other debuts were Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced, Halo: Campaign Evolved, Splatoon Raiders, and Echoes of Aincrad: Sword Art Online.

Mobile offered the one bright spot. Pokémon Go climbed to third in US consumer spending, up ten places from June, with revenue rising 230% month over month during its 10th anniversary events, Sensor Tower’s Bryan Isagholian noted in the data release. Monopoly Go and Royal Match held the top two mobile positions.

July 2026 by the Numbers

• $4.5 billion total US spending on content, hardware, and accessories, down 10% year over year
• $85 million in new physical game spending, the lowest month since tracking began in 1995
• 63% of physical spending on Nintendo platforms; 32% PlayStation; 4% Xbox
• $282 million in hardware spending, down 29%; units down 39%; average selling price up 16% to $542
• $4.1 billion in content spending, down 9%; $178 million in accessories, down 6%
• PlayStation 5 units down 6%, Xbox Series down 18%, Switch 2 down 51%

The Physical Market’s Long Slide

July’s $85 million is a milestone in a contraction years in the making. Piscatella noted in July 2026 that only two PlayStation games sold more than 10,000 physical units in the US during the week ending July 11, 2026, and that just seven PlayStation titles have cleared 100,000 physical units for the year.

Platform holders are already acting on the trend. Sony will stop producing physical discs for new games launching on PlayStation consoles from January 2028, a decision Gaming.net covered in July 2026. The platform whose games now represent roughly a third of remaining physical spending has set a date for stepping back from the format, leaving Nintendo, which sells nearly two-thirds of the boxed software in America, as the format’s center of gravity.

The next scheduled milestone lands inside three weeks: Nintendo’s Switch 2 price increase takes effect September 1, 2026, and Circana’s August 2026 report, the first month to fully reflect it, follows on October 8, 2026.