As hardware prices continue to increase amid all the AI craze, both the PlayStation and Xbox are noting record low sales, with the former dropping to levels not seen since May 2000. Xbox, on the other hand, had the worst May since it started making consoles, signaling a dire future for Microsoft’s gaming division.
That is according to VGC, which writes that PlayStation 5 sold 58 percent fewer units this May compared to the same month in 2025, whereas Xbox saw a 12 percent decline. This brought Sony’s hardware numbers to levels not seen since the start of this century, whereas Microsoft is now at its lowest point on record.
The significant discrepancy between the declines likely has to do with Sony bumping up the prices of its consoles several months ago, which immediately led to a significant drop in sales, whereas Microsoft announced new prices just today. That is probably going to impact Xbox sales even further, as some editions of the console now cost nearly $900, or around $150 more than before.
Most of these hardware price increases are the result of AI companies buying out, or at least planning to buy, undiced memory wafers from a very small clique of memory manufacturers (SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung Electronics).
Now that nearly all of the world’s memory supply is flowing toward AI companies and their data center partners, consumer-grade memory is simply not there, and though Sony previously said it secured enough memory to last it a while, it nevertheless started increasing prices to its PS Plus subscription and will, I believe, increase the price of consoles once more at some point in the future.
Xbox resisted the trends as much as it could, but even it had to fold eventually. Valve’s Steam Machine costs over $1000 despite its low specs precisely because of this, but there still remains a good portion of the global population that is trying to convince us that all of these sacrifices and rising costs are somehow good.
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