Total U.S. video game sales rose 11% year-over-year for the month of August, while sales figures so far this year were up 1%, according to a research report from Circana on Wednesday.
August sales came in at $4.66B compared with $4.18B for the same period last year.
The bulk of sales, as usual, was generated by game content, which rose 11% to $4.18B for the month. The growth was led by a 21% jump in console content spending and a 6% increase in spending on mobile video game content.
Hardware sales were up 32% at $312M for the month, while accessory sales saw a 6% decline from the prior year to $169M.
So far this year, overall U.S. sales were $37.33B vs. $37.06B in 2024. Game content sales were flat at $32.85B, hardware sales surged 20% to $2.86B, while accessories sales fell 6% to $1.63B.
When looking closely at hardware numbers for the period from August 3 through August 30, Circana analyst Mat Piscatella noted that Nintendo Switch 2 (OTCPK:NTDOF) (OTCPK:NTDOY) sales were able to offset double-digit percentage declines across each of PlayStation 5 (NYSE:SONY), Xbox Series (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Switch.
“With 2.4 million units sold over its first 3 months in the market, the Nintendo Switch 2 is now 5% ahead of the previous record-setting pace of PlayStation 4, which sold 2.2 million units during its first 3 months ending January 2014,” Piscatella said. “Nintendo Switch 2 unit sales are trending 77% ahead of the time-aligned sales of the original Nintendo Switch.”
NBA 2K26 was the best-selling premium video game of August and became the 5th best-selling game of 2025 year-to-date. It was the month’s best-seller on both PlayStation and Xbox.
The month’s top 10 mobile games by U.S. consumer spending: MONOPOLY GO!, Royal Match, Last War: Survival, Candy Crush Saga (NASDAQ:MSFT), Clash Royale, Pokémon Go, Kingshot, Whiteout Survival, Free Fire, and Royal Kingdom.
“This is a new age of the US top ten. Newcomers like Kingshot and Royal Kingdom are scaling and breaking in, while mainstays like Playrix’s Gardenscapes and Homescapes have been banished to the top twenty,” said Sam Aune, the gaming insight analyst at Sensor Tower. “Other evergreen titles like Clash Royale and Free Fire have made comebacks.”
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