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The Console Market's Decline (DS Telegrams) (Patreon)

Published:
2026-01-07 22:41:32
Imported:
2026-01
Tags:

Content

AI AI AI! RAM RAM RAM! CES CES CES! Yeah, I (Tom) decided I want a break from the usual subjects this week - but one that still touches on something major...why not the decline of the console market?

Yep - it's not just XBOX, PlayStation sales are also down, and just in general it seems like something is up with that sector. SO - write in below with your thoughts, questions, and things you've noticed regarding what's going on and what's causing what's going on.

You have ~3 hours to submit below!

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sony-plans-financial-unit-ipo-070149216.html

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2026/01/xbox-console-sales-the-worst-on-record-in-2025-as-microsoft-shifts-focus-uk

https://hardforum.com/threads/console-sales-are-massively-down-year-over-year-and-its-going-to-get-worse.2045481/

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1pozjq8/xbox_sales_are_down_70_yearoveryear_with_ps5_down/

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/windows-central-no-its-not-just-xbox-all-video-game-console-sales-are-massively-down-year-over-year.1691475/#google_vignette

Comments

Jen-Hsun Huang, AI is not circular

The console market would not be in decline if they embraced Nvidia CPU and GPU technology! We could have a PS5 Pro doing 16K! Xbox Series S 8K!

Bryo

Having PC gamed since the 90s, the shift to console development in the mid 2000s started to make it feel like pc ports were an afterthought, if they happened at all. I think a lot seemed to change around 2012-2014 with the rise of modern esports and most importantly streaming! Streaming really gave PC a second wind. Even though you can do face cam streaming on consoles, it’s just clunky and hard to interact, PC seems like the natural platform for it, and I think it played a huge role in the resurgence of pc alongside console stagnation with the 360/ps3. Seems like a trend that just continued since.

CypherCookie

I think consoles are still the best price/performance for a lot of people. I think they might face missed the boat in regards to how beefy their hardware should be but personally i love my PS5 Pro just not the price as i feel what the ps5 pro is, is what the PS5 should have been

FloridaMan

Is the lack of console sales mainly due to lack of exclusives, high pricing, and market saturation? How would you divy up the percentage of each sales problem for each company?

Zach J

I haven't been gaming much in the last year or so i might be out of date, but how much do you the lack big titles and exclusives pay a part in this.

Mark Smith

Without a compelling reason to own a PS5 or Xbox Series console after they recently priced themselves out of the market, we are in a weird place, hardware-wise. A 10-year-old decently specced PC can play most, if not all, modern 2025 titles. A $100 PS4 makes for an easy decision if you have children and want to give them a reasonably priced "Fortnite Box" that connects to any display, easily turns on, and still works even if the disc drive is shot. This is gaming tech limbo if I have ever witnessed anything like this before, and I haven't. I've been gaming since 1983.

Shifting Pixel

Consoles in decline? Honestly not really. Xbox gave up anyway, Nintendo had the best console launch in their history and the PS5 is doing increddibly well for a console in it's 6th year and for having so little exclusives. This is the new normal. PC gaming is not doing so much better honestly

Lorenzo Linares

You mean the PS5 is down in comparison to where the PS4 was 5 years in?

Falto

My theory is that by now anyone that was going to buy a console excluding the switch 2 (ill do a separate reader mail) has most likely already bought it. Covid had a huge spike in gaming and thus I think potential console owners have their respective consoles. However I do think this maximum is significantly less than it was last gen as the ps5 is almost on par with ps4 sales if we compare with respect to time. Not to mention Xbox completely dropping the ball so if anything you'd expect PS5 to outright beat ps4 by a decent amount. So where are these people going to? I believe they have fled to PC. With the price hikes of PS and Xbox, anyone that was considering getting console probably did the math and figured maybe getting PC isn't so much expensive and could be better overall value. Not to mention that exclusives barely exist which was a defining reason to buy a console every gen until now as even Sony is bringing many of their first party titles to PC. https://www.vgchartz.com/article/466077/ps5-vs-ps4-sales-comparison-september-2025/

HaveAGoodDay

Do you think that gaming is down just because there's so many remakes and frequently the upgrades of the remakes make for a frustrating experience? Take for example metal gear solid 3.

HaveAGoodDay

Do you think people are giving up on some of the console excitement because they overhyped, for example VR with so many VR suppliers of hardware but no games really materialized. The psvr2 doesn't even have updates to use it on any of the older games. By the way, have you heard if VR is going to be supported on Ace combat 8?

HaveAGoodDay

Do you think they'll be a surge of game purchases whenever pssr2 is out if it really does the visual improvements we're expecting? I have a PS5 pro and some games are awesome and some I wish I could tell it it was just the PS 5 so that I could run that mode

Falto

Why I think Switch 2 sales are lacking is as I think people waiting for more exclusive games to release...switch 1's first year was extremely powerful, we had a Mario Kart, a Splatoon, A Xenoblade, a Zelda and more exclusives. While now we only have a Donkey Kong game, a Mario kart and Kirby game. I think Switch 2 overall will probably be a fine seller in the long run, of course it likely wont beat Switch 1, but it shouldn't be a flop like Wii U. Just Nintendo does need to cut the BS and release games. I know that the switch 2 had some controversy with the screen and battery life being lackluster...however I should remind everyone that Nintendo is always a wild card lol...Unlike a steam deck or its PC handheld competitors...Nintendo can effectively release a turd and as long as it has alot of great games...people will buy lmao.

Wund3rBr3d

I think that if there is a decline in console sales, I imagine it's because too many studios are still releasing games for last gen consoles. Black Ops 7 got a PS4 and Xbox One release. Switch 2 had very few launch games, and offered largely only updated versions of old games. However, I think GTA 6 will push people to upgrade. It's even making me consider buying my first console in over a decade since Rockstar always delays the PC release

Cleansweep

I think AAA dev cycles and general lack of new AA/AAA IP/timely new entries in franchises people like is probably behind a lot of the decline in interest. Between F2P and lots of older games that may play better than new games, there's not a lot of incentive to get new consoles at their current price points. A lot of people are probably saving money by sticking with older hardware or got cheap, pre-RAM crisis gaming rigs to do their gaming on. If I were a parent, I would've taken the upfront cost of a ~$800 gaming rig pre-RAM crisis and used Steam sales/maybe EGS freebies as the long-tail "I'm getting a good value" justification for the choice. At least then I could get away with upgrading one or two components every so often to keep it working well.

CompressedAIBlocks

I think the dev cycles and lack of system selling exclusives are to blame across the board. We're also in an era where consoles do not have the connectivity/feature set even a cheap PC does when there's literally magnitudes more people interested in AI ATM (sorry I said the bad word). As a lower mid range offering, they're great for pure gaming but we've been training the general consumer to expect a lot out of devices since the 7th generation of consoles/emergence of smartphones - and AI furthers that want for devices that can do everything. It makes sense consoles are declining when they are basically more cumbersome media machines and have less use outside of just gaming now.

Jeff Burns

I think people in general are sorta overthinking the decline, consoles are suppose to be the cheapest gateway into current gen gaming. We are 5-6 years into the Gen(depending on if you count the pandemic which some don’t) the PS5 is still 450-500 dollars just like it was at launch. The Xbox is going up in price the series S is now looked at as to weak and it’s going up. At this point in most console Gens there would be a cheaper version and there would be consoled on EBay you could get for 250-300. That’s not the case and Sony is seemingly happy with the current ps5 pace. That’s why the sales look slower then prior gens IMO

boomstick

On weekends I volunteer with preteens and teens and it's fascinating to see a good number of them into PCs and PC gaming. I think that in becoming more like PCs consoles have inadvertently opened the door for PC gaming to be more mainstream. There isn't a single smoking gun that contributes to the downturn of consume gaming but rather a confluence of events, including the popularity of streaming, YouTube, and free to play games like fortnite. The culture has shifted and console gaming still has a place, albeit a shrinking one.

Nathan Schied

Between lack of exclusives, steam sales being better, not to mention no subscriptions just to play my games online, pc games just always feel like a better deal. I used to play multiplayer games on console to avoid cheaters, but now I get stuck using a controller against people with those mouse and keyboard adapters. Like you’ve mentioned before, everyone has a computer for work/school anyway, and these days, that pc can almost always run every game. That wasnt true until this gen, maybe the ps4/xbox one generation. It’s a similar story as to why the switch and steam deck were able to be successful, not limited to almost mobile versions of real games like the psp. Linux, even, is plug and play once the os is installed, so what I’m wondering is why would you buy a console anymore? What can they do to differentiate themselves going forward?

Chicken Point

I heard on a podcast (I think it was Game Scoop) that the biggest chunk of unit sales typically occurs in the tail end of a console generation, when the price of a console decreases. If correct, this would mean that the price hikes alone are sufficient to explain console sales being low relative to the equivalent moment in previous console generations. However, the sales are not low only relative to the equivalent moment in previous console generations. Rather, the sales are low relative to ALL moments in every console generation since 1995. The price hikes do not seem sufficient to explain that, at least upon first glance. I'm sure they are a contributing factor, but it seems likely that there are other factors. For one thing, phones, tablets, and laptops continue to offer better gaming experiences, which reduces the need for a dedicated gaming device. Consequently, developers and publishers notice more players spending money gaming on those phones, tablets and laptops, thereby adding incentive to release games on those platforms. This further adds to the attractiveness of gaming on those platforms, and diminishes the proportion of games releasing on consoles that push said consoles to their limits, further reducing the attractiveness of purchasing a console instead of playing on a cheap laptop. It's a snowball effect. Though having said all this, I don't know how powerful is in reducing console sales. Two other factors that seem plausible are the death of Moore's law, and the ballooning cost of game development. In previous generations, Moore's law guaranteed huge growth in the possibility-space of game development between console generations, resulting in more games that were not practically possible on older hardware. Now that technological advancement is more incremental, past-gen ports are increasingly achievable, resulting in more past-gen ports, thereby reducing the attractiveness of purchasing current-gen. Moreoever, making a game that pushes current-gen hardware to its limits has become extremely costly, which discourages risk-taking from investors. This puts pressure to maximise the addressable audience of any game, which reduces the incentive to make games that fully exploit any particular piece of hardware. A good counter-example helps to reinforce this point: the open-world Zelda games fully exploit the Switch and Switch 2 hardware, and lo and behold, those devices sell like hotcakes. Thus, we get the following counterfactual claim: if the PS5 had more games that pushed it to its limit, more people would buy a PS5.

Chicken Point

Giving the option to choose between the PS5 version and the Pro version seems to be something that Sony could implement without any developer effort. We can even choose to run a PS4 version when there is a PS5 version available! Strange that Sony haven't implemented it... maybe it's about pride. I find it unlikely that the PSSR update, on its own, will have any significant impact, especially given Tom's prediction/report that it will not automatically update/upgrade any game -- it will require the PS5 Pro port to be remade for each individual game. So, the update on its own won't have any impact: if PSSR2 has any impact, it will be because developers put in the effort to exploit it. Given that developers don't seem to have spent too much time exploiting PSSR1, it seems unlikely that they'll devote much time remaking their Pro port for past releases. Instead, if PSSR2 is properly leveraged, this seems most likely to happen in games releasing in 2026 and later.

Chicken Point

I agree with your point about the lack of exclusives. The success of the Switch illustrates that point: the Switch offered games that weren't available elsewhere, of extremely high quality, that made full use of the hardware; plausibly, this is what accounts for the Switch's success. Thus, you can capture the zeitgeist and make people want to buy your hardware just by producing exclusive games, even if those games are graphically inferior to games on competing systems. If the above is correct, then it invites the suggestion that Sony could have been making system-selling, zeitgeist-capturing PS5 exclusives, on an achievable budget. On this suggestion, the pivot to live-service was a speculative gamble; it was not necessitated by the ballooning cost of game development.

Chicken Point

Go on OpenCritic/MetaCritic, and look at the top-rated games from the past 5 years. Which platform has had the largest number of those titles ported to it? PC. If you are making a game, the default is to release on PC (or mobile). Releasing on other platforms is a non-standard addition, and releasing on other platforms *instead of* on PC is never done, unless under contract with that platform-holder. In other words: releasing a game is synonymous with releasing a game on PC. (Unless it's a mobile game.) How did things end up this way? I don't know. But, in explaining the situation of console, it seems worthy of consideration.