Evgeny Obedkov

Xbox Series lags behind Xbox One and Xbox 360 in US sales on time aligned basis, according to Circana

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Circana is back with its monthly report on the US games market. Here is a quick look at the best-selling products, including how the sales of Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 compare to their predecessors.

Life-to-date US sales of Xbox Series X|S lag behind Xbox One and 360 on time aligned basis

Console spending experienced a huge decline in April

According to Circana’s Mat Piscatella, US consumers spent $208 million on video game hardware last month, down 43% year-over-year. The decline was at least 26% across all current-gen consoles, with Nintendo Switch sales down 69% from the same period last year.

PlayStation 5 remained the leader in both unit and dollar sales, while Switch ranked 2nd in unit sales and Xbox Series X|S was 2nd in dollars.

Piscatella noted that “[hardware] declines this year are steeper than I’d expected.” He also shared some data on life-to-date PS5 and Xbox Series X|S sales compared to previous generations over the similar period of their life cycle:

  • PlayStation 5 is currently 8% ahead of PS4 in terms of US unit sales;
  • Xbox Series X|S lags Xbox One by 13% and “remains slightly behind” Xbox 360.

“Xbox One had a strong start with a not great finish, while Xbox 360 had a decent start with an amazing finish,” the analyst explained. “We’ll see what happens with XBS this holiday.”

Other data on the US games market for April 2024

  • Last month, US consumers spent almost $4.1 billion on video game content, hardware, and accessories, down 3% year-over-year.
  • As mentioned above, hardware sales experienced the biggest decline, while spending on accessories fell 4% year-over-year to $152 million.
  • Sales of video games, including DLC, in-app purchases, and subscriptions grew 2% year-over-year to $3.73 billion. The growth was driven by mobile, with “gains from this segment offsetting a 24% year-on-year dip in content spending on Console platforms.”

  • Stellar Blade became the best-selling premium game in the US last month. Despite its chart-topping debut, Piscatella noted that the title “did have the lowest sales to lead an April since Prototype 2 ranked 1st in April 2012.”
  • Shift Up’s action game was the only new premium release to chart in the top 20 last month, also ranking as the 16th best-selling game of 2024 year-to-date.
  • Helldivers 2 remains the number one premium title of the year in terms of dollar sales. The top 10 didn’t change much from March, but Sea of Thieves jumped 24 positions to #18 thanks to its release on PlayStation.
  • Sea of Thieves also ranked as the 4th best-selling premium title in April, while Grounded (another Xbox title ported to PlayStation) rose 155 positions to #12.

  • The Fallout franchise experienced a huge surge in sales last month, driven by the popularity of Amazon’s TV show. Fallout 4 climbed from 87th to 5th place, followed by Fallout 76 (#8, ↑151), Fallout: New Vegas (#24, ↑169), and Fallout 3 (#37, ↑279).

  • Mobile game spending grew 12% year-over-year, led by the strong performance of Monopoly Go!, Royal Match, and Candy Crush Saga. Other titles in the top 10 were Roblox, Last War: Survival, Coin Master, Whiteout Survival, Township, Evony, and Clash of Clans.

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