Some new eye-opening data from Circana demonstrates the impacts of gaming hardware getting more expensive, as over half the households who bought gaming hardware recently made $100,000 or more a year.
More specifically, a post from Circana’s Senior Director Mat Piscatella on Bluesky revealed that 53% of households who bought new video game hardware, like the Nintendo Switch 2 or PS5 Pro, in Q4 2025 made more than $100,000 annually. In Q1 2022, only 40% of buyers were above that threshold.
Conversely, poorer households are buying less gaming hardware, as those making under $50,000 a year were just 19% of the buyers in Q4 2025, but they were 31% of the consumer base in Q1 2022. Essentially, this data shows that majority of consumers buying new hardware are from a smaller, richer base.
