US market spending on new physical game copies in the year 2025 has reached its lowest point since back in 1995.
Mat Piscatella, Senior Director and Video Game Industry Advisor at Circana, took to Blue Sky to share that spending on new physical game copies fell 11% in 2025 compared to 2024 in the US market. According to him, this is the lowest rate of decline since 2021 (-8%), and far better than the -28% recorded in 2024.
While the rate of decline has slowed down, the analyst said that it’s mostly because it is near the all-time low point. He also stated that the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 helped in stabilizing the decline. According to him, there’s certainly something to be said about the desire to return to analog and non-connected devices, especially for Gen Z, but it isn’t a dramatic said.
However, Piscatella stated that spending on new physical video games also reached only 1.5 billion US Dollars in 2025, which is an all-time tracked low since a decade ago in 1995. He further mentioned that the peak for US new physical video game spending was reached in 2008, at 11.6 billion US Dollars. New physical video game spending has declined every year since. The sharpest decline was noted in 2024 (-28%), followed by 2012 (-22%).
Earlier this year, Piscatella revealed that the US video game market recorded total consumer spending of 60.7 billion US Dollars n 2025, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 1.4 percent. The growth was supported by higher spending across subscription services, hardware, and mobile content, helping the market recover modestly compared to 2024. Spending performance in December played a meaningful role in the annual outcome. Total projected US video game spending in December 2025 reached 7.8 billion US Dollars, representing a 3 percent increase compared to the same month a year earlier. Gains in hardware, subscriptions, and PC content were cited as the primary drivers behind the monthly growth, even as some categories posted declines.
