Hardware Sales Stuck in 1995, But Sports Games Continue to Dominate

As the holiday season consumes us all, it’s time to look and see what people are buying (or not buying) as we approach the end of the year.

December sales are still TBD, but at least so far we’re getting a view of what looks to be a soft hardware market for the holiday season. I want to look a little more into that, but first, I want to answer a mailbag question from the OS community.

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This question comes from OS legend studbucket. I would love to start answering more of these in Friday’s newsletter (post them in the Discord or DM me on Discord), and I’ve said before that I’m happy to dedicate a whole newsletter to mailbag questions if we get enough. That said, I’m also happy to just pick one out each week and start the newsletter with it.

Here we go:

I like this question because I think fans of multiple genres are asking this question right now, not just sports game fans.

If I can remove the general “bias” towards certain genres in review scores as a caveat (RPGs, Metroidvanias, and Souls-likes definitely get a little boost over most other games to me), I definitely see the general trends you’re talking about.

That said, I think what a lot of those games referenced all have in common is long development times. We’re generally talking 5-6 years for a lot of these games.

Silksong became a meme all its own in that regard, and Zelda is another series that will be delayed and delayed until it’s perfect. Baldur’s Gate 3 was in development around six years, and Clair Obscur had a good five years in development as well.

Even if we take off the “Covid tax” in terms of throwing off development time, none of these things came together in short order — and they generally all grew in scope as they were being built.

And even these studios are not perfect. Larian itself is in a bit of hot water right now for a couple things I won’t get too much into here, and Helldivers 2 has gone through some bumpiness post-launch as it navigates post-release content and keeping fans happy. This is all to say even those who did most everything right do still hit some roadblocks, and it’s hard to keep everyone happy even after you make an amazing game.

Point being, I think the answer to this question comes down to a couple things. I do think the licensing is a factor, but the other question is does a sports game even benefit in the same way from a 5-6 year development window? It’s likely not a story-rich game, so to me a development that long says that a sports game must be doing something almost entirely fresh.

I’m open to the possibility of something like that occurring, but I’m not sure people are even clamoring for “all new” sports game experiences more than they’re just looking to rekindle a love they already had for sports games. For a lot of people, it’s either wanting more choice, or just wanting the joy they felt back in the 2000s during the era of NBA Street, the NFL 2K vs. Madden wars, and having multiple sports games per sport.

Bringing it back around, the type of person you are probably informs the answer to this question as well. I am eternally optimistic, so I do think it’s possible, but I do think it would take a different tact from both sports leagues and developers. I think any sports game that shocks the world will play out a little like the Super Mega Baseball situation where they get licensing after the fact — real players start making it into later versions of the game after MLB realizes it’s a quality product.

Alternatively, maybe we start to get more F1 situations where the devs just put out an “expansion” while releasing a new game every other year. A lot of that still comes down to licensing and whether or not the leagues are fine with their agreements being tweaked that way, plus there’s a question about how much these games need to sell to even break even due to the exorbitant licensing fees.

So do I think it’s possible? Absolutely. However, I don’t think an unlicensed sports game will ever reach those heights among a large audience (all these highly reviewed games also sell millions of copies, after all), and I do think there will need to be some shift somewhere in the business model/development timeline for any sports game (new or old) to find that level of success.

(One other caveat is that I still think an NBA Street or NBA Jam sort of game could catch the world by storm, but I think even that arcade formula needs some new twist to get there.)

As for this week’s news, there’s not a ton going on right now in the sports world, which makes it a good week to look at sales data. Circana is one outlet who does work tracking all this stuff, and Circana senior director Mat Piscatella has a bunch of charts and figures to show what’s going down right now in the video game world.

First, we’ve got the best-selling games of the year:

EA tops the charts with Battlefield 6, which plays back into this week’s mailbag question in that DICE had to look inward and say “hey we need to make a good game again” and they mostly have delivered — and people have rewarded them by buying their game.

NBA 2K26, CFB 26, Madden 26 are all in the top 10 for the year. Then we get FC 26, MLB The Show 25, WWE 2K25, and the dual CFB/Madden bundle as things all making it into the top 20 for yearly sales.

Nothing here really stands out except maybe FC dropping a bit in the last couple years, and now CFB being a top 5-7 game again after its decade-plus absence prior to last year. Sports games still sell, even if people complain along the way.

In terms of what people are playing, that list is a little more interesting:

Besides the “friendslop” game Peak (I say “slop” with respect in this case, Peak is a fun rock climbing game to play with friends), no sports or racing games are on the list on Steam. On consoles, we get NBA 2K as the only sports game featured on both Xbox and PlayStation. Between both lists, Madden 26, WWE 2K25, Rocket League, and Skate do make appearances in the top 20.

Since this is based on “users” it’s a little noteworthy that the best-selling games perhaps don’t retain these folks week to week. However, it’s a lot of “forever games” on the list, which means these are games with millions upon millions of users who have played the same game for years and years while sports gamers are always moving on to next year’s title, which splinters the market for those franchises.

The most concerning trend overall is the hardware sales:

Mat’s chart points it out that the price of hardware has never been higher (at least since ‘95), and unit sales have now hit a 30-year low. Correlation is not necessarily causation, but it is one factor worth noting right now. Piscatella also talked to IGN in more depth about the sales data.

These rising costs aren’t coming out of nowhere. RAM is being pre-purchased for AI things that don’t currently exist and are not currently sold (see: speculative), and there’s tariff shenanigans in the US specifically, so it’s more expensive to make these devices than it was when they first came out, which is not usually how things work with home consoles. Instead, things usually get cheaper over time, and then these companies can start offering more and more sales and/or price drops to entice new folks.

It’s sort of inverted the whole model, and everyone (especially Microsoft) is taking a hit in the hardware space because of it. The one exception is the NEX Playground, which you probably have never heard of until now.

It’s essentially a plug-and-play device with PS3-level graphics and no controllers needed. It uses a camera to track up to four people, and it’s $250. It’s basically trying to be a new-age Wii, albeit with a much smaller library of games and an (optional) subscription service attached to it.

Much like the Wii, this is not for “traditional” gamers, but it’s a secondary device or something that ends up speaking to the non-gamer market. Point being, it’s doing well and it’s cheaper than everything else in the hardware space.

We’ll need to wait for December sales to get a better picture of what’s going on here, but I think what this does is probably make Sony specifically wonder about how aggressive they’re really going to be about the next PlayStation. We’ve already gotten rumors about the PS6, and while “soft” sales in the past have been a precursor for hardware companies wanting to push towards the next thing, if hardware prices are stuck at these higher levels it becomes far less appetizing to want to make them go even higher.

Whatever ends up happening, this will be a story to track into next year as the PS4 to PS5 lifespan was 2013-2020, and the Xbox 360 to Xbox One lifespan was 2005-2013. Are we on pace for something like that again, or are we looking at even longer lifespans for these consoles before the next pieces of hardware come out?

Until next time y’all. And, as always, thanks for reading.

-Chase

(PS, this is the last “regular” newsletter that will be hitting your inboxes before Christmas, so Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you out there.)