Circana senior director and veteran video game industry analyst Mat Piscatella has just shared the latest monthly sales numbers for the video game industry in the US for the month of May 2026. Usually, the big topic from these reports comes down to which games are at the top of the charts, and while that's still significant here, the bigger topic is what happened with hardware sales. While the Nintendo Switch 2 continued to sell and helped drive spending growth in the US video game industry for May 2026 compared to May 2025, the PS5 and PlayStation overall saw its worst May for hardware units sold in 26 years, and Xbox had its worst May in its entire history.
Now, things weren't so bad for PlayStation that more Xbox Series consoles (which are going up in price again) sold than PS5 consoles. The ranking order for which platform sold more units is still just Nintendo and PlayStation in first and second place, positions they just swap between on a monthly basis, while Xbox sometimes doesn't even make it into third.
But it was so bad that PlayStation saw a 43% drop in hardware spending and a 58% drop in PS5 units sold compared to May 2025. Spending on video game hardware in the US was still up by 38% overall compared to last May, but that's because the price of each console continues to rise. As a reminder, the Switch 2 price hike isn't live yet, but PlayStation's last one went into effect as of this past April. The last Series X/S price hike before the one going into effect on August 1, 2026, also helped Xbox find spending growth despite lower unit sales.
Speaking of Xbox hardware unit sales, if we hadn't gotten so used to Xbox consoles selling less and less all the time, then perhaps it would be more notable that Xbox recorded its lowest number of units sold for the month of May ever. Both PlayStation and Xbox recorded all-time lows in hardware sales for May, but only one of those feels like an outlier, while the other seems to be business as usual.
Before digging into the top-selling games for May 2026, the last notable bit on hardware is that the Switch 2 officially reached 5.9M units sold in the US for its first 12 months on the market. It's the second-fastest-selling Nintendo console in the US in the company's history, right behind the GameBoy Advance, which hit 6.5M units sold in its first 12 months.
Moving on to the top-selling games for the month, the overall winner was unsurprisingly 007 First Light, which beat out Forza Horizon 6 in second place, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight in third, and Subnautica 2 in fourth on Circana's charts. With the caveat that Subnautica 2 and Forza Horizon 6's numbers include digital sales projections rather than digital point of sale actuals, all of which are included for the rest of the titles.
That doesn't make 007 First Light's place at the top of the charts any less impressive though, especially since it also catapults the game into fourth place for the top-selling games in the US for the year of 2026 so far. Forza Horizon 6 however is right behind it in fifth place, with the top three of MLB The Show 26 in third, Crimson Desert in second, and Resident Evil Requiem in first seemingly locked in for now.
LEGO Batman also makes an appearance on the top-10 list for the year overall, taking seventh place. With 007 First Light, Forza Horizon 6, and LEGO Batman all newcomers to the top-10 list for the year, it's Minecraft, ARC Raiders, and NBA 2K26 all getting bumped out of the top-10 from April to May.
Overall, despite PlayStation and Xbox recording all-time lows for hardware sales in May, it was a month of growth for the US video game industry. Overall spending hit $4.2 billion, a 3% increase compared to May 2025. Overall hardware spending, as previously mentioned, still went up thanks to the rising cost of hardware, and spending on software (which Piscatella classifies as 'Content' in his monthly report) also went up by 1% compared to May 2025, to $3.8 billion. A growth driven by software sales on console, rather than on PC.
With Nintendo being the clear winner for the month while its competitors bombed, and the fact that the Switch 2 helped drive a year-on-year rise in physical game sales in the US for the first time since 2009, the Switch 2 is the current industry trailblazer. We'll see if it can maintain that title throughout the rest of the year. Or at least until November, when it will ultimately fall to second fiddle to the biggest video game release in the history of video games.
About the author: David has been writing about videogames, technology, and culture since 2020, with a focus on reporting daily news across multiple publications, including GameDaily.Biz, GameSkinny, and PlayStation Universe before joining Wccftech in 2025. David started contributing as Canada/US reporter for Wccftech's gaming section in 2025. Besides being up-to-date on the industry's movements, he loves interviewing developers, reviewing games, and writing intricate essays about the symbolism and layered meanings to be found in rich narratives as he's done for publications like GamesIndustry.Biz, LostInCult, and others. Outside of games he loves movies, music, theatre, his hometown, and his family, though not necessarily in that order.
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