Dec 2025 USA Sales: Industry Rebounds from One of the Worst Months on Record

Idk why I thought of this, but if the industry generated nearly $61 billion over one whole year, a year where the recent Call of Duty release wasn’t even the top-selling title, and Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard/King for over $75 billion…why?

@orvisbean101 There have been a few questionable buyouts/acquisition in gaming over the years, another obvious one is Sony buying Bungie for $3.7B, we will never know how those at the top of these companies see/know.

@orvisbean101 To boost gamepass numbers to 100 million, try and gain some player base back from Sony and as one email said "outspend Sony out of business". Obviously a few years later they failed on all three and probably regret it deep down. But on the bright side they are now primarily a third party publisher and Playstation players get access to a lot more games, IP's that were locked off from the platform for many gens. So in the end those deals were worth it in my opinion.

@themightyant Well if that was to happen then surely it would also effect pc gaming stores and mobile too, so there would be strong competition against that in the courts. Also that would be a move that would see Sony double down on making their own live service games, if they can't get revenue from third party online games then they will surely just make their own. So indeed that would be a disastrous outcome if that was to ever happen, I'm sure Steam and Nintendo would also not be too happy.

Also if Microsoft were to push this then Sony would get nothing from allowing their games onto the PlayStation Store, and could just block them from doing so.

@orvisbean101 You have to remember that MS approached ABK to buy them years before they actually did acquire them and then had to 'fight' for the right to acquire them and agree to numerous deals to appease just a few different 'Glodal' authoroities. They were 'expected' to take over a few months earlier as well but the case dragged on.

When the agreed on the takeover, the Games industry was still in a 'boom' after the Pandemic in 2021 and before the world went into a massive global Crisis - partly brought on by the events in Ukraine from Feb 2022 and the resulting Sanctions raising Oil/Fuel prices which in turn raised general living expenses.

Arguably no-one would have predicted that 'War' would occur and thatwould have such an impact - Part of those sanctions also affecting the Games industry as they pulled out and ceased trading - losing a massive chunk of revenue from that region as well as seeing a drop in sales as people tightened their spending on leisure activities.

That led to massive restructuring across the whole industry - every major publisher now 'struggling', deciding to close studios, cancel games because they 'project' that they will run out of money before those games get made and/or won't sell enough to recoup their costs. Its not 'just' MS that cut their Staff and cancelled games - Sony has, Ubisoft has, EA has, Square Enix has, WB has etc etc etc..

I know that Politics shouldn't be discussed and many of us use Gaming to escape the 'real' world, don't want to consider what is happening outside of the gaming 'bubble', but the reality is that is having a MASSIVE impact on the industry - people are choosing not to buy 'new' releases - certainly not in the quantity they were - opting to wait for sales whilst playing games like Roblox and Fortnite. They may still buy the odd 1 or 2 'new' games, but being far more selective and picky. Instead buying both BF6 and CoD, deciding which one they will buy until the other is on Sale (if they buy at all) for example or waiting for reviews and if it doesnt score a '9/10', deciding to wait for a sale instead for example.

The costs have risen - its not just 'developer' overheads (wages, electricity, rent etc) that's gone up, but also the costs of manufacturing and distributing their Products 'globally' - the fuel cost to send their Discs around the world, but the sales aren't going up to cover those rises.

The last couple of years have been very rough for the industry so we have seen many publishers do whatever they can - MS has increased the number of games it now releases 'everywhere' to try and maximise its revenue. I doubt Fable would have been a 'Day 1' release on PS but after nearly a 'decade' of development costs to try and recover, they need that sales revenue - Forza 6 hasn't been that long so a few months of exclusivity can be afforded and 5 may have bought them 'time' too...

@orvisbean101 Candy Crush, it is making MS a lot of money. Plus owning several IP's that can be used. Something like COD was only part of the deal.

@orvisbean101 @oram77

This is because ABK made about ~$2B in profit annually when Microsoft bought them. In the long term, that meant ABK would pay for itself over the next 30-35 years if profit remained flat. Microsoft had plenty of cash on hand that wouldn't create as big of a return as $2B a year, so they wagered spending the money to boost revenue by ~$8B and profit by ~$2B would be a better investment than holding onto the money.

Additionally, like every company, they believe in infinite growth, so likely expect to break even much sooner by growing profits. There is also the market power Microsoft claimed they needed to survive in the gaming business. Since the entire gaming business made $61B in 2025, that means ABK's average revenue (years 2022 - 2024) was 13% of the total. That's a lot.

@UltimateOtaku91 @themightyant
I think that is why we will never see the OPTION of an affordable disc drive disappear (alternative purchase method).
Of course, Sony also have the backup defense of heavily subsidised hardware (particularly when you add in R&D costs).

I would hope though that Sony have something else up their sleeve for this eventuality eg Dev kits that are 'leased' , though they REALLY need to get rid of the web browser as that is just asking for problems.