Consoles: units down 39%, price up 16%, and only Sony got paid for it

Sony's line is the one worth doing arithmetic on. PS5 dollars rose 29% while PS5 units fell 6% ^[5][3], which puts revenue per console sold up about 37% ^[1]. The $100 Sony added across the range in April was a 20% increase on the standard machine's previous $499 ^[6][2], so the other 17 points came from somewhere else: buyers moving up toward the $899 Pro ^[6], or discounting that used to happen and no longer does. Six percent fewer boxes for 37% more money each is an implied elasticity of about -0.16 ^[3]. That is a price increase being paid, not refused.

Microsoft's line reads the other way. Xbox Series dollars fell 18% and units fell 18% ^[9][3], so revenue per Xbox sold did not move at all ^[13], even though prices went up on every model and the 2TB Series X was dropped ^[9]. Higher list prices, the dearest SKU withdrawn, and the same average take per unit: buyers went down the range as fast as the prices went up.

The 39% belongs mostly to Nintendo, and not to Nintendo's pricing. Switch 2 led July on unit volume ^[7] and fell 51% ^[3], measured against the record June 2025 launch that Piscatella flagged as a skewed comparison, with the console still 11% ahead of the original Switch on a time-aligned basis ^[8]. Dividing the two headline numbers gives an implied aggregate elasticity of -2.4 ^[4]. Treat that as a ceiling rather than a measurement, because the largest single unit contributor shrank for calendar reasons.

What the month actually cost is easier to pin down. The average console changed hands for roughly $75 more than a year earlier ^[5][6]. Across the roughly 520,000 sold ^[12], that premium collected something like $39 million ^[9], while about $115 million left hardware altogether ^[7][8]. Hardware was around 6% of US game spending in the month ^[12] and around 23% of the decline in it ^[10][11], which is the ratio to watch: a small line item doing a quarter of the damage.

Nintendo shows how early this is. Its RAM costs for Switch 2 rose 41% late last year, and it reportedly cut planned output by 2 million units in March ^[11]. The supply side was adjusted months before the retail price was. Meanwhile the visible part of the market keeps narrowing: Xbox holds a little over 4% of US physical game spending this year against Nintendo's 63% and PlayStation's 32% ^[14], and Sony stops making discs for new games in January 2028 ^[15].