Xbox and EA stopped reporting their sales, and the slice still being counted hit an all-time low

The scoreboard lost its two biggest reporters

Circana publishes the monthly report that tells everyone how the US games market is doing [1]. For physical games it buys the numbers from shops. For digital sales it has to be handed them, by the platform or by the publisher [1].

As of July, Xbox is no longer part of Circana’s digital data sharing panel, the company confirmed this week [1]. The panel is simply the group of publishers who volunteer their download figures [1]. EA has also dropped out, “time aligned to its going private,” Circana said [1]. EA was taken private last year in a $55 billion deal led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund [10].

Xbox leaving is the bigger hole. It ends public visibility on downloads of Xbox’s own games, Call of Duty included [1]. It also hides publishers who never reported directly but whose games sold through the Xbox store, such as Ubisoft, and now EA [1]. This month’s software charts are full of guesswork [1].

Twelve publishers remain on the panel: Bandai Namco, Capcom, Crystal Dynamics, Disney Interactive Studios, Eidos, Konami, Plaion, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two and Warner Bros [1]. Nintendo has never shared digital data, so its chart positions are educated estimates [1]. Steam and Battle.net sales have never been counted at all [1].

The part that can still be counted is nearly gone

Physical software sales in the US fell to $85 million in July, the lowest month since Circana began tracking in 1995 [2][3]. Nintendo platforms took 63% of this year’s physical spending and PlayStation 32%, leaving Xbox just over 4% [4].

Sony’s own filings put digital at 82% of full-game software sales across PS4 and PS5 [3]. Sony stops pressing discs for new games in January 2028 [3]. So the counted slice is thinning from both ends at once: the shops sell less, and the publishers who could fill the gap are walking away.

A market nobody can see clearly is having a bad month

Total US games spending fell 10% year on year in July, to $4.5 billion [2][3]. Kotaku, reading the same report, put the drop in content spending alone at 9% [4]. Hardware spending fell 29% to $282 million, the lowest July since 2020’s $163 million [2][5].

Units dropped 39%, while the average price of a console rose 16% to $542 [2][5]. PS5 units were down 6%, Xbox Series 18%, and Switch 2 51% against its launch year [2][5]. Subscriptions were the only category that grew, up 6% [3].

Circana’s Mat Piscatella pointed past the calendar to “higher hardware prices driven by the RAM and component crisis” [3]. Polygon traced the squeeze to the same place: memory chips being bought up for AI [6]. Those costs have also left Sony unsure when to launch the PlayStation 6 [8]. Ampere Analysis forecasts 39 million fewer next-generation consoles sold over five years if the PS6 and Xbox’s Project Helix arrive at $1,000 rather than $700 [7]. That is roughly 12% less player spending over three years, about $3.4 billion [7].

The projected best-selling game of July was Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, released in 2012 and revived by a current-generation PlayStation port [4].

The people under the numbers, and what they are building

Hundreds of unionised workers rallied outside Xbox studios on 19 August, in Austin, Dallas, Seattle, Rockville, Hunt Valley, Montreal and Minneapolis [9]. The Communications Workers of America organised the “Save Our Devs” protests against Microsoft’s plan to cut 3,200 Xbox jobs this fiscal year [9]. It is the division’s fifth round of layoffs in three years [9]. The first 1,600 cuts hit Obsidian, id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios [9]. CWA and CWA Canada are taking legal action against Microsoft over how the layoffs were handled [9]. At EA, staff describe cynicism and doubt after the Saudi buyout; one told Game Developer “I feel dirty” [10].

The same week produced an unusual amount of building. Harvey Smith, who ran Arkane Austin until Microsoft closed it in 2024, revealed Black Pony Immersive, a 26-person studio he had opened quietly a year earlier [11][12]. “Ben and I chose the worst time in history,” he said of starting it [11]. Human: Fall Flat veterans Sitara Shefta and Will Dudley launched Pretty Cool Games, funded by Arknights developer Hypergryph [13]. Veteran developers and accessibility experts formed Raze and Rebuild Studio, a worker-owned co-op, with no outside money at all [14]. Three former Epic engineers announced Immens, an engine aimed at small teams [15]. Double Fine, cut loose by Xbox, is crowdfunding a public game jam that starts on 31 August [22].

Money is moving that way too. Makers Fund closed a $250 million fourth fund, taking it to $1.5 billion under management [16].

Elsewhere this week

Guerrilla Games is stripping the always-online part out of Horizon Hunters Gathering after poor playtest feedback, Bloomberg reported [17]. Staff were told they have until December to impress executives, and many developers will move to another project [17]. Almost all of Guerrilla has worked on the game for years [17]. Rob Fahey of GamesIndustry.biz called the cost of Sony’s decade chasing always-online hits enormous, counted in studios missing for most of the PS5 era [18].

Alibaba is selling its games unit Lingxi to private equity firm Trustar Capital for more than $2 billion, a person familiar with the talks told Reuters [19]. Rover’s Tale developer Observer Interactive left publisher Team17 to publish the game itself, pushing release to 2027 [20]. Arco, a Mesoamerican fantasy role-playing game, passed 100,000 copies and covered its costs two years after launch [21]. And Godot, the free open-source engine, keeps taking users from Unity and Unreal [23].