Last month kicked off the big annual torrent of autumn game releases and Circana has finally shared its latest sales data and estimates for September 2026. What did we learn? Games are up. Hardware is down. Wolverine took home the gold. Xbox sales continue to decline.
Circana senior director and gaming research head Mat Piscatella shared his latest monthly breakdown of U.S. sales data this morning over on Bluesky. “U.S. video game projected total spending across content, hardware and accessories fell 1 percent in September when compared to a year ago, to $4.8 billion,” he wrote. “Year-to-date spending is now 3 percent behind 2025’s pace, at $41.0 billion.”
Marvel’s Wolverine was the big winner. It was the top-selling game for September 2026, even ahead of NBA 2K27 and EA Sports FC 27. It’s already 11th overall on the list of top-selling games year-to-date. Both of those data points are tracing ahead of Ghost of Yotei‘s fall launch a year ago. “Marvel’s Wolverine generated the highest launch month full game dollar sales for a Sony published title since the February 2024 debut of Helldivers II,” according to Piscatella. That’s with Insomniac Games’ latest release getting a middling Metacritic score and being completely exclusive (no PC release is planned).
That’s great for Sony, but what about the rest of the AAA gaming space? Usually, the monthly best-sellers list is full of hangers-on from prior months, including annual sports games and Call of Duty sequels. But September’s list was almost completely dominated by new releases. Those ranged from The Blood of Dawnwalker to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. There was a mix of genres and sequels and big franchises alongside first-time releases. That’s heartening.
Less heartening is the news around console sales. Once again, Sony excelled. “PlayStation 5 unit sales increased by 22 percent year-on-year, with Switch 2 unit sales falling 14 percent and Xbox Series dropping 27 percent,” Piscatella wrote. PS5 is presumably up thanks to the bump from Grand Theft Auto 6‘s Netflix reveal the month prior. Switch 2 sales are seemingly down amid the latest price hike, though that might reverse as we get closer to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s release in November.
And what about Xbox? News from the hardware front continues to sound dismal. The AI-fueled price hikes aren’t helping, nor is Microsoft’s hampered supply chain. An all-digital PS5 will currently sell for $600. The equivalent Xbox Series X starts at $750. Microsoft is also seemingly having trouble keeping its consoles well stocked. A message that allegedly went out to some users who haven’t turned their existing Xbox on in a while asked them to resell to Best Buy where someone who might actually use it can pick it up at a discount.