Switch 2 Best-Seller in the US in December 2025, Metroid Prime 4 Debuts in 7th - Sales
by William D'Angelo , posted on 22 January 2026 / 9,341 Views
The Nintendo Switch 2 was the best-selling console in the US for December 2025 in terms of units sold and dollar sales, according to figures from Circana (formerly The NPD Group). Circana includes the dates for the five-week period of November 30 to January 3.
The Switch 2 was not only the best-selling console in December, but was also number one for 2025. This helped offset the declines in the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.
In seven months the Switch 2 has sold 4.4 million units in the US, which is nearly double the original Switch on a time-aligned basis. It also remains the fastest-selling video game console of all-time through seventh month as it is tracking 35% ahead of the PlayStation 4. Only the Game Boy Advance has sold more in the US through seven months.
The total number of consoles sold for the month were down eight percent compared to last year, while the average sales price increased 18 percent.
The PlayStation 5 was the second best-selling console for the month of December with sales about 30 percent year-on-year. The Xbox Series X|S came in third place with sales down about 55 percent and the Nintendo Switch 1 came in fourth place with sales down a little over 70 percent. The NEX Playground came in fifth place with sales a little below 200,000 units.
Overall spending on video games in December increased three percent year-on-year from $7.57 billion to $7.77 billion. Spending on video game content increased three percent from 5.76 billion to $5.93 billion, while video game hardware sales increase six percent from $1.14 billion to $1.21 billion. Spending on accessories decreased seven percent from $674 million to $625 million.
In terms of 2025 total sales, overall spending on video games is up one percent year-on-year from $59.88 billion to $60.69 billion. Spending on video game content increased one percent from $51.70 billion to $52.30 billion, while video game hardware sales grew nine percent from $5.00 billion to $5.44 billion. Spending on accessories decreased seven percent from $3.18 billion to $2.95 billion.
"Increases in consumer spending on subscription services, hardware and mobile content helped the US video game market reach $60.7 billion in 2025, achieving 1.4% growth when compared to a year ago," said Circana Executive Director and Video Game Industry Analyst Mat Piscatella.
He added, "December video game content spending grew 3% when compared to a year ago, to $5.9B. Spending on subscription services increased by 24% when compared to a year ago, while the PC, cloud and non-console VR content segment gained 6%.
"2025 annual video game content spending grew 1% compared to 2024, reaching $52.3 billion. 20% growth in spending on subscription services and a 1% increase in mobile offset declines across other content segments."
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 was the best-selling game in December and is seven year in a row Call of Duty was number one in December. It is now the fifth best-selling game of the year.
There was one new game in the top 20 in December and that was Metroid Prime 4: Beyond in 7th place. It should be noted Nintendo does not share digital sales of its games.
Battlefield 6 was the third best-selling game of the month and is the top selling game of the year. It came in first on Xbox and PC, while it came in second on PlayStation only behind NBA 2K26.
Fortnite was number one in terms of the total active users on PlayStation and Xbox in 2025 with over half of all active users on both platforms playing the game at least once.
Here are the top 20 best-selling games in terms of dollars for December 2025:
Here are the top 20 best-selling games in 2025 year-to-date:
Here are the top 10 best-selling premium games on PlayStation platforms in December 2025:
Here are the top 10 best-selling premium games on Xbox platforms in December 2025:
Here are the top 10 best-selling premium games on Nintendo platforms in December 2025:
Here are the top 10 best-selling premium games on PC in December 2025:
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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So the trend continues that Sony outsells Nintendo in November and the other way round in December.
I feel like it has been that way for a while. And yes lol.
From Novermber Nintendo was doomed to Numba 1 in December even though the PS5 is still discounted. Hardstruck Platinum even said that the Switch 2 will never outsell PS5 again. Facts.
Lol. nice namedrop
The Mario Kart World Bundle was discounted in December at all major retailers.
Also the PS5 is 5 years old by now.
Decent but not good results overall for both.
Prime 4 is a hit!! ^^
Overall a very healthy state of the market in December and 2025 in total.
Interesting;
Ghost of Yōtei (10th) surpassed Forza Horizon 5 (16th) in the US in 2025. The latter which was recently claimed to have sold more than 5 million units worldwide on PS5.
Looks like Yōtei had quite a decent run. Congrats!
That's unfortunate....
Okayyyyy, the way i was expecting MP4 to be a flop but it had at least a great launch. Might be able to pull 3-4 million lifetime sales. Not great but might push them to continue.
I’m curious how these figures for NS2 compare to NS1 December 2017? Switch 1 moved through an absurd supply of units during this month in its lifecycle (>4mil). If Switch 2 matched, that would extremely good!
Nintendo stock fell about 3% after the report came out so investors seemingly weren't happy with it's performance. Not being tribalistic here, because Sony's also fell about 3%. numbers were bad across the board it seems.
Day-to-day/hour-to-hour fluctuation in stock market prices tells us literally nothing when it comes to commercial performance of nor announcements surrounding/pertaining to video game hardware.
For instance, Nintendo's JP stock value almost always goes down after a Nintendo Direct airs, regardless of consumer reception to announcements. As another example, Nintendo's stock value went down the day they announced their record breaking launch figure of 3.5mil (6-11). And so forth. Long-term trends might be a bit more telling (e.g. Nintendo's recent downturn in stock has been a reflection of (a.) Nintendo Switch 2 investor hype cooling down, (b.) lack of a major first-party release during Holiday 2025, and (c.) overall uncertainty in the tech sector), but not even that is entirely reliable (e.g. Nintendo's stock wasn't doing too hot during 2018/2019 nor 2022/2023 despite strong commercial success).
maybe it's just coincidence and investors weren't even paying attention to the Circana numbers. Strange though because even though you gave exceptions to the rule, generally the market value goes up with good sales news
Nintendo stock has been going down for a while now because of fears of the memory shortage.
NS1 sales in November 2017 (US): 775k
NS1 sales in December 2017 (US): 1550k
whoops. Thanks
