63% of US players buy at most two games a year. Industry’s foundation lies in the hands of a small elite

The senior publishing director of Circana's analytics group, Mat Piscatella, shared data from the Future of Video Games study conducted in the third quarter of 2025 in the United States. Special focus was placed on how often players made purchases, which were mostly found to be relatively rare.

1. The data shows that the majority of people (63%) buy only one or two new games per year – 33% of players buy a new game less than once a year, 12% about once a year, and 18% once every six months.
2. The second largest group consists of those who buy a new game roughly once every 3 months – in this case, it's 22%.
3. The smallest groups are those who buy new games once a month (10%) and more frequently (4%).

The term "new game" doesn't refer to a freshly released title but to its condition – in this case, it means an unused game.

Commenting on the results, Piscatella suggested that the market is actually driven by a small group of players who buy one or more games per month, maintaining high game prices. This group constitutes only 14% of the total.

The analyst pointed out that if these numbers seem odd to someone, it's probably because the people checking out his profile, who are into these kinds of stats, are likely part of that 14% of players themselves. As a result, they may not be aware of the broader perspective.

• gaming industry
• surveys and research
• the video games industry