Spending On Physical Games In The U.S. Was…Up? In August…Thanks To Game-Key Cards?

In a weird twist, apparently consumer spending on new physical video games in the U.S. was actually up 5 percent year-over-year for the month of August, and it’s mostly thanks to game-key cards.

Okay, it’s mostly thanks to there being way more game-key cards available than before, and the Switch 2…existing.

This comes from Circana, which reports the 5-percent increase on new physical software as largely due to a whopping 631-percent increase in spending on game-key cards, offsetting a 3-percent drop in everything else.

But that number sounded very suspicious, so I asked Circana’s Mat Piscatella what was up.

“Last year there were 10 titles published as Game-Key Cards,” he replied. “This year 54 more Game-Key Card titles have been published. So that’s the biggest reason. So, we are seeing new physical software sales showing growth for the first time in more than a decade. But that’s being driven primarily by Switch 2 and publishers leaning more into Game-Key Cards.”

So, yeah, Switch 2 is out, people want to buy more physical games on it than they do other consoles, there are more games available now than there were last year, and a lot of them are game-key cards. That explains that. (But if Sony asks, it’s totally because physical media is back in.)

Overall spending on content was down 10 percent, mostly due to a big drop in mobile spending, but console content spending was also down. PC was up, as was subscription spending. NBA 2K27 was the best-selling game of August, followed by Madden NFL 27, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, Madden’s Kickoff Bundle, and Star Wars Zero Company, in that order. Big month for new launches! NBA 2K27 is also now the third best-selling game of the year thus far.

Elden Ring jumped from 41st in July to 7th in August thanks to its Switch 2 release, and Piscatella tells me that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 ranked 11th, up from 31st, thanks to hype from the recent film. Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece also had a huge leap, from 159th to 26th, thanks to D23’s big reveals and a Steam sale.

Oh, and look! Big Walk cracked the top 10! That’s kinda nuts for an indie like that!

Total spending was down 9 percent year-over-year to $4.3 billion due to a drop in mobile and console content spending, offset by PC content spending being up

Accessories spending was up 3 percent, and total hardware spending was down 3 percent. PS5 dollar sales were up 17 percent but Xbox and Switch 2 spending dropped 13 percent and offset that. Also, that’s spending, so taking price increases into consideration. Unit sales were pretty dismal: down 15 percent year-over-year in the lowest total for an August month since 2013. PlayStation hardware was down 11 percent (also the lowest since 2013), Xbox was down 31 percent (lowest since 2020), and Nintendo was down 15 percent. The average price for a new unit of hardware was $541. Yikes.