For most of 2026, the story of the US console market was supposed to be simple: Nintendo Switch 2 sells more boxes, Sony’s PlayStation 5 sells more expensive ones, and everyone wins on a different scoreboard. That script fell apart in May. According to Circana, the market research firm that tracks US retail sales for the games industry, Switch 2 beat PS5 in both units and dollars for the month and for the year to date, while PS5 hardware spending collapsed 43% year-over-year and unit sales dropped 58%. The culprit, per Circana senior director Mat Piscatella, is blunt: price increases.
It is a sharp reversal from where the year started. In January 2026, PS5 was still the top-selling console in the US in both units and dollars, with Switch 2 running second. Five months later, the roles had flipped entirely, and PS5’s average selling price had climbed to $672, up 33% from a year earlier. With Nintendo’s own US price hike to $499.99 taking effect September 1, 2026, the sales race between the two platforms is about to get another jolt, and the numbers so far suggest Sony is the one absorbing the damage.
Switch 2 Wins Units and Dollars for the First Time This Year
Circana’s May 2026 US hardware report marks a turning point. Nintendo Switch 2 was the best-selling gaming hardware platform in the United States in both units and dollars for May and for 2026 year-to-date, a distinction that had belonged to PS5 just months earlier. Piscatella, who has tracked the category for Circana (formerly the NPD Group) for years, called Switch 2’s opening year the second-fastest video game hardware launch in US tracking history since 1995, trailing only the Game Boy Advance.
That launch pace shows up in the installed base. Switch 2 closed its first 12 months on the US market with a 5.9 million unit installed base, built almost entirely on organic demand rather than price cuts. Nintendo has not needed to discount the console to move units; if anything, the opposite is now true, with the September 1 MSRP increase to $499.99 arriving well within that first-year window rather than after demand had cooled.
Why PS5 Sales Cratered: The Price-Hike Effect
The PS5 numbers from May 2026 are stark by any measure. Hardware spending on PS5 fell 43% year-over-year, and unit sales dropped 58% over the same stretch. Circana explicitly attributes the decline to recent price increases, and the pricing data backs that up: the average price paid for a PS5 in the US climbed to $672 in May 2026, a 33% jump from May 2025. For context, that average now sits well above the console’s original $499.99 disc-model launch price from 2020, reflecting a mix of official price adjustments, Sony’s exit from physical disc manufacturing, and a shrinking supply of lower-priced SKUs.
Sony was not alone in raising prices. Xbox Series hardware carried an average selling price of $524 in May 2026, up 22% year-over-year, and Xbox unit sales hit their lowest May total ever recorded by Circana. Across the entire US hardware category, the average price paid for a new console climbed to $502 in May 2026, up from $440 a year earlier. In other words, the whole market got more expensive, but PS5 absorbed the steepest unit and revenue hit of the three major platforms.
PlayStation hardware unit sales in May 2026 fell to their lowest May total since May 2000, a comparison that spans roughly a quarter-century of console history and includes the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3, and PS4 launch cycles. That is a meaningful marker: it is not just PS5 losing ground to a hot new competitor, it is PS5 posting one of the weakest single months for the entire PlayStation hardware business Circana has ever tracked in that calendar slot.
From January’s Lead to May’s Collapse: A Five-Month Reversal
The pivot did not happen overnight, and the January data shows why the reversal is so notable. Circana’s January 2026 report had PS5 as the best-selling console in the US in both units and dollars, with Switch 2 in second place. Total US hardware spending that month reached $248 million, up 16% year-over-year, but Piscatella noted that growth was driven almost entirely by Switch 2, even as it trailed PS5 in absolute terms. PS5 unit sales were already down 17% year-over-year in January, months before the steeper May decline set in.
Read together, the January and May reports describe a fairly clean cause-and-effect story. PS5 entered 2026 as the incumbent leader, already showing early softness. Sony then raised effective prices through the spring, and by May, the average PS5 buyer was paying 33% more than a year prior. Switch 2, still in its first year on the market and priced well below $672, absorbed the demand PS5 shed. The result: a platform that led the category in January was, by May, posting its worst unit month in a quarter-century for that specific point in the calendar.
| Metric | January 2026 | May 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| US market leader (units) | PS5 | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| US market leader (dollars) | PS5 | Nintendo Switch 2 |
| PS5 unit sales, YoY | Down 17% | Down 58% |
| PS5 hardware spending, YoY | Not broken out | Down 43% |
| Total US hardware spend | $248 million (+16% YoY) | Not broken out by Circana |
| Switch 2 US installed base | Building toward year-one milestone | 5.9 million units (first 12 months) |
Source: Circana US hardware tracking reports for January and May 2026, as reported via TechRadar.
The Global Picture: Switch 2 Nears 20 Million Units Shipped
The US story is only part of the picture. Nintendo’s fiscal-year 2026 earnings, covering the year ended March 31, 2026, confirmed that Switch 2 shipped 19.86 million units worldwide in its first nine months on the market. That is a scale few consoles reach in their first year, and it puts Switch 2’s global trajectory well ahead of where the original Switch stood at the same point in its lifecycle.
Nintendo also disclosed that Switch 2 shipped 2.49 million units globally in the January–March 2026 quarter alone, and the company said that figure outsold PS5 by roughly one million units in the same three months. Sony has not published its own quarterly PS5 shipment number for that window, so the implied PS5 total of roughly 1.49 million units for the quarter is an inference from Nintendo’s disclosure rather than an official Sony figure. Still, even as an estimate, it lines up with the broader trend Circana’s US data shows: Switch 2 gaining share while PS5 growth slows.
That global shipment pace matters beyond bragging rights. Nintendo has framed Switch 2’s launch trajectory as among the fastest in console history, and third-party publishers plan software roadmaps around where the installed base is growing fastest. A platform adding tens of millions of units in under a year, without needing markdowns to do it, is a very different pitch to studios than one whose average price just jumped a third in twelve months.
What the Price Data Says About Where Each Platform Is Headed
Average selling price is one of the more useful numbers Circana tracks, because it captures the blended effect of official price hikes, SKU mix (digital-only versus disc models), bundles, and discounting, all in one figure. The May 2026 numbers show a market where every major platform got more expensive, but not equally.
| Platform | Avg. Selling Price, May 2026 | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|
| PlayStation 5 | $672 | +33% |
| Xbox Series X/S | $524 | +22% |
| All video game hardware (blended) | $502 | +14% (from $440) |
Source: Circana US hardware tracking, May 2026, as reported via TechRadar.
Nintendo’s own price move landed after this data was collected. The US MSRP for Switch 2 rose from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, 2026, and the Choose Your Game bundle that paired the console with one major first-party title for $499.99 ended August 31, 2026. That means Switch 2’s average selling price, which was not broken out separately in Circana’s May report, is about to climb too. Whether that narrows the gap with PS5’s $672 average or simply makes both platforms pricier without changing the unit-sales gap is the open question for the back half of 2026.
Xbox Series Is Caught in the Same Downdraft
Microsoft’s hardware business is not escaping the pricing squeeze either. Xbox Series X/S posted its lowest-ever May unit total in Circana’s tracking history, even as its average selling price rose 22% year-over-year to $524. Xbox has increasingly leaned on Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Play Anywhere, and subscription-driven software revenue rather than hardware volume to sustain its business, and the May 2026 numbers reinforce why: hardware alone is a shrinking part of Microsoft’s console story, with unit sales now trailing both PS5 and Switch 2 by wide margins in the same reporting period.
That leaves a three-way market where one platform, Switch 2, is winning on both volume and revenue, one, PS5, is losing significant volume but still commands the highest average transaction price, and one, Xbox Series, is losing on both fronts in the traditional hardware sense while betting its future on services. It is a meaningfully different competitive picture than the one that defined the first half of the generation, when PS5 and Xbox Series competed head-to-head on similar footing.
Historical Context: Console Price Hikes Have Punished Sales Before
Sony has raised PS5 prices before, and the pattern of consumer pushback followed by a sales dip is not new to this console generation or to Sony specifically. Console makers have generally treated mid-cycle price increases as a last resort precisely because hardware demand tends to be price-elastic in a way software and services are not. What makes the May 2026 numbers unusual is the scale: a 58% unit decline and 43% spending decline in a single tracked month is a steeper drop than typical post-price-hike softness, and it arrived at the same time a well-funded new competitor was actively taking share.
The original Nintendo Switch offers its own historical anchor point. As of mid-2026, the original Switch’s lifetime hardware sales stood at 156.59 million units, a number built over roughly nine years without a direct successor competing against it for most of that run. Switch 2 does not have that luxury or that runway; it launched directly into a market where PS5 was already an entrenched, high-volume platform. That Switch 2 has still managed to out-ship and out-sell PS5 on a monthly basis by May 2026 says as much about PS5’s pricing decisions as it does about Nintendo’s execution.
What Analysts and Sony Are Saying
Circana’s own reporting has been the most direct voice on the shift. As the firm put it in its May 2026 hardware summary reported by TechRadar, “PS5 spending was down 43% and had a significant 58% drop in unit sales, while Xbox Series hardware spending grew 7% versus a year ago, but unit sales fell by 12%.” That framing puts PS5’s decline in sharper relief than Xbox’s, since Xbox at least grew its spending figure even as units fell, while PS5 fell on both counts simultaneously.
Nintendo, for its part, has pointed to the underlying shipment numbers rather than pricing commentary. In its fiscal-year 2026 earnings discussion, the company stated that “Switch 2 outsold the PS5 by roughly one million units in the January–March 2026 quarter,” as summarized in a lifetime sales comparison of the two platforms. That is a company letting shipment data speak for itself rather than commenting directly on a competitor’s pricing strategy.
Sony has been more measured in its own public remarks about PS5’s business trajectory. In financial results coverage, Sony Interactive Entertainment said, “We were able to steadily expand our PS5 install base in line with our original plan,” a statement made in the context of the company’s broader hardware strategy, as reported by Yahoo Finance. That comment predates the sharpest May declines and reflects Sony’s institutional preference for framing PS5’s roughly six-year run in terms of cumulative install base growth rather than any single month’s unit trend.
Competitive Comparison: Three Different Playbooks
The three console makers are now running visibly different plays in the same market. Nintendo is leaning on volume: a lower entry price, a fast-growing installed base, and a first-year sales pace Circana ranks second only to the Game Boy Advance in US history. Its September 1 price increase to $499.99 tests whether that volume strategy survives a price hike of its own, but even at the new price, Switch 2 remains well below PS5’s $672 average transaction price.
Sony is leaning on revenue per user. A large, established PS5 install base gives Sony a sizable, monetizable base of existing owners, and the company has continued to secure timed console exclusives, such as Marvel’s Wolverine and Dune: Awakening, that keep high-spending PlayStation loyalists engaged even as new hardware sales cool. The risk is that a shrinking flow of new PS5 buyers eventually caps how much that strategy can grow, since exclusives sell software to an installed base that is expanding more slowly than Switch 2’s.
Microsoft is leaning away from hardware altogether. With Xbox Series units at their lowest-ever May total, Microsoft’s public strategy has increasingly centered on Xbox Cloud Gaming, Xbox Play Anywhere cross-platform purchases, and Game Pass subscription revenue, rather than competing directly on console unit sales. Each approach reflects a genuinely different bet about where console-generation profit will come from over the next few years, and the May 2026 Circana data is the clearest single snapshot yet of how differently those bets are performing in the same month.
Market Impact: Publishers and Third-Party Studios Are Watching Closely
For third-party publishers deciding where to invest development resources, installed-base momentum matters as much as raw unit totals. A platform adding 5.9 million US units in a single year, without discounting, is a strong signal to build for Switch 2 as a lead or co-lead platform going forward, particularly for titles that can scale down from PS5-class visuals. Nintendo has already used its Gamescom 2026 presence to court exactly that kind of support, showcasing third-party titles including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 and EA Sports FC 27 running on the platform, momentum that follows Switch 2’s outsized sales lead over the original Switch in markets like Europe.
For PS5, the calculus is different but not necessarily worse for publishers of premium, narrative-driven titles. A shrinking flow of new hardware buyers is offset by an installed base of tens of millions of existing owners who, based on the average selling price data, are willing to pay a premium for the platform. Big-budget exclusives and timed-exclusive deals remain a viable strategy specifically because PS5’s existing user base skews toward higher per-user software spending, even if the hardware growth curve has flattened, a dynamic Sony is also managing alongside a separate $457 million PlayStation Store lawsuit that adds legal cost pressure to its digital storefront business.
The bigger open question is whether Nintendo’s own price increase changes this calculus in the back half of 2026. If Switch 2’s average selling price climbs meaningfully toward Xbox Series’ $524 mark following the MSRP hike, Nintendo’s volume advantage could narrow just as third-party publishers are finalizing 2027 release-platform plans, making the next two or three Circana reports unusually consequential for software roadmaps industry-wide.
Predictions: Where the Console Race Heads Next
- Switch 2’s dollar lead narrows after September. With the US MSRP move to $499.99 effective September 1, 2026, Switch 2’s average selling price should rise from whatever level supported its May sweep, likely compressing its dollar-sales advantage over PS5 even if its unit lead holds.
- Sony leans harder into exclusives rather than a price cut. Given Sony’s public framing of PS5’s install base as expanding “in line with our original plan,” expect continued investment in timed console exclusives like Marvel’s Wolverine and Dune: Awakening rather than a near-term MSRP reduction.
- Holiday 2026 data becomes the real test. Circana’s June, July, and August 2026 hardware reports were not yet public as of this writing, meaning the holiday-quarter numbers, expected in early 2027, will show whether May’s reversal was a temporary pricing shock or a durable shift in leadership.
- Xbox doubles down on services over hardware. With Xbox Series posting its lowest-ever May unit total, Microsoft’s public roadmap is likely to keep emphasizing Xbox Cloud Gaming and Play Anywhere rather than a new console price move, treating hardware as a smaller share of overall Xbox revenue.
- Third-party platform prioritization shifts toward Switch 2. A fast-growing, discount-free installed base of 5.9 million US units in year one gives publishers a stronger incentive to treat Switch 2 as a lead platform for cross-platform titles, a trend likely to show up in 2027 release calendars.
The Bottom Line
Five months separated PS5’s January lead from its May collapse, and the numbers in between describe a fairly direct relationship between price and demand. PS5’s average selling price rose 33% year-over-year to $672, and its unit sales fell 58% in the same reporting month. Switch 2, priced well below that figure even after its own September increase, absorbed the difference and became, for the first time in this generation’s Circana tracking, the platform leading the US market in both units and dollars simultaneously. Whether that becomes the new normal or a one-month anomaly depends heavily on how PS5 pricing evolves through the holidays, and on how much of Switch 2’s own price increase gets passed on to consumers who have shown, so far, that they will keep buying it anyway.
Frequently Asked Questions
Did Nintendo Switch 2 outsell PS5 in 2026?
Yes, for May 2026 and for 2026 year-to-date at that point, according to Circana’s US hardware tracking. Switch 2 led PS5 in both units sold and dollars spent, reversing PS5’s lead from January 2026, when PS5 was still the top-selling console in the US in both categories.
Why did PS5 sales drop so much in 2026?
Circana attributes the decline directly to price increases. The average PS5 price paid by US consumers rose to $672 in May 2026, up 33% from a year earlier, and unit sales fell 58% year-over-year in the same month, alongside a 43% drop in hardware spending.
How many Switch 2 units have sold in the US?
Switch 2 closed its first 12 months on the US market with a 5.9 million unit installed base, which Circana analyst Mat Piscatella described as the second-fastest video game hardware launch in US tracking history since 1995, behind only the Game Boy Advance.
What is the new price of Nintendo Switch 2 in the US?
The US MSRP for Switch 2 rose from $449.99 to $499.99 effective September 1, 2026. The Choose Your Game bundle, which paired the console with one major first-party title at $499.99, ended August 31, 2026.
How many Switch 2 units has Nintendo shipped worldwide?
Nintendo’s fiscal-year 2026 earnings, covering the period through March 31, 2026, confirmed 19.86 million Switch 2 units shipped globally in the console’s first nine months on the market, including 2.49 million units in the January–March 2026 quarter alone.
Is PS5 still outselling Switch 2 globally?
Not based on the most recent quarterly data available. Nintendo has stated that Switch 2 outsold PS5 by roughly one million units globally in the January–March 2026 quarter. Sony has not published a directly comparable quarterly PS5 shipment figure for the same period.
Is Xbox Series losing to both PS5 and Switch 2?
In unit terms, yes. Xbox Series X/S posted its lowest-ever May unit total in Circana’s tracking history, trailing both PS5 and Switch 2. Its average selling price did rise 22% year-over-year to $524, meaning Xbox hardware spending grew even as units fell, a different pattern than PS5’s simultaneous decline in both metrics.
Will PS5 prices come back down?
There is no confirmed near-term price reduction as of this reporting. Sony’s public statements have emphasized steady install-base growth “in line with our original plan” rather than signaling a price rollback, and the company has continued to invest in timed console exclusives rather than discounting hardware directly.