Majority of game console sales in the US are to families earning £73,000 or more

Console sales among high income households in the US have shot up in the past four years, lending credence to arguments that gaming’s become a hobby for the rich.

Gaming has always been an expensive hobby, but over the last few years the prices have been rising at an alarming rate. The PlayStation 5 was recently hit with a second price rise, both the Xbox Series X and Xbox Game Pass have became more expensive, and Nintendo began charging upwards of £75 for some Switch 2 games.

And yet, it was still surprising to see just how low video game console sales fell in the US towards the end of last year. Despite the run up to Christmas, discounts on the PlayStation 5, and the Switch 2 still being fairly new, only 1.6 million units were sold altogether in November 2025; the lowest total for a November month since at least 1995.

However, new data from analytics firm Circana states that gaming hardware sales have actually gone up in the US lately, but only among households that are earning incomes of $100,000 (£72,600) or higher.

According to Circana senior director Mat Piscatella on Bluesky, 40% of gaming hardware buyers in the first quarter of 2022 (January to March) were from such households.

As of the last quarter of 2025 (October to December), that statistic has increased to 53%. Conversely, the opposite has happened with gaming hardware buyers from households with incomes of less than $50,000 (£36,300). In the same amount of time, the percentage has dropped from 31% to 19%.

Here’s a wild (but not surprising?) stat – 53% of US video game hardware buyers in Q4 ’25 had a household income of $100k+ – a record high – and up from 40% in Q1 ’22.The average price of video game hardware in the US was $373 in Q1 2022, jumping to $446 by Q4 2025.Source: Circana Checkout

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2026-01-29T12:58:42.040Z

Piscatella calls these stats ‘wild but not surprising,’ adding that further price hikes should be expected, along with an increase in ‘premium targeted accessories’ and ‘even more creative ways of packaging games into fancy editions at higher price points.’

All this lends further credence to the argument that gaming is becoming more of a hobby for the rich. Some have argued that, because of how inflation works, video games themselves are actually cheaper than they perhaps should be, but does that matter when lower income households can no longer afford the consoles to play those games on?

Not to mention that everything else has become more expensive, from basic amenities to family homes, to the point where 90% of earners here in the UK can’t afford to buy a home.

People have grown more reliant on expensive tech just to get by day-to-day, such as mobile phones (which regularly need to be replaced) and stable internet connections.

Combined with stagnant wages, even if gaming is still technically affordable, some households simply don’t have enough room in their budgets to account for it.

This is why games like Fortnite remains so popular, despite their age. Outside of optional items and cosmetics, they don’t cost anything to play.

As such, Piscatella theorises that, to ensure long-term growth, the industry will push more free-to-play experiences and ‘slowly raise the temp of the water over time through price increases and FOMO driven microtransactions.’

Some publishers, like Ubisoft, have repeatedly tried to score a hit free-to-play game and despite constant failure still won’t give up. Sony is much the same, while new release Highguard shows that even many indie developers see live service games as the future.

The new data also explains the rise of PCs, with lower end gaming rigs now actually cheaper than many consoles.

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