During 2025’s Black Friday, the PS5 accounted for 62% of console sales. This was a dominant run for Sony, as the Switch 2 was the console in second place, accounting for 27% of sales. Meanwhile, a new, modular, and “family-friendly” console called the Nex Playground managed to outperform the Xbox Series X|S.
Now, according to sales data from The Games Business (h/t VideoGamesChronicle), it’s revealed that 2025 was the worst year on record for Xbox console sales in the UK. Yes, the worst of all time.
Some might expect 2026 to be a better year for Xbox, possibly due to major first-party releases like Halo: Campaign Evolved, Fable, and Gears of War E-Day. However, we’re not even sure those games will ship on time, especially since we don’t have concrete release dates for any of them. Regardless, the content and service divisions remain strong. This just reaffirms our belief that the hardware race is not Xbox’s focus anymore.
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What Does 2026 Look Like For Xbox?
With Xbox, you always have to expect the unexpected. Whether it’s massive layoffs across the board, major studios shutting down, or price hikes, it seems like there’s always some bad news around the corner. Then again, this was always bound to happen when Xbox realized there was no coming back after they lost the eighth-generation console battle.
They first tried to buy up as many studios as possible to make Xbox the forefront of your favorite AAA games. But those acquisitions took too long to become profitable, and they completely transitioned the business model to publishing. The console business hasn’t been viable for Xbox for nearly 10 years now, and news such as today’s from the UK is just another reminder of that.
The investments were just too gigantic. As such, it doesn’t make sense for the company to take a loss on hardware when they’re not even close to recouping the initial investments. However, this doesn’t mean the new strategy won’t work. Forza Horizon 5 was quite the success on PS5, and Call of Duty continues to bring massive revenue across all platforms.
So what about 2026? Xbox will likely just be looking to generate revenue from Game Pass and game sales from all platforms. There’s no doubt that games like Forza Horizon 6 will be a win for Xbox; it’s just big titles like these won’t necessarily translate to hardware sales.
Published: Jan 6, 2026 01:00 pm