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Although everyone's a bit doom and gloom about the price of Xbox Series consoles following an increase announcement in late June, it turns out that last month was the best month of 2026 for Xbox console sales in the US.
Mat Piscatella of Circana has highlighted today how Xbox Series sales were up a whopping 86% compared to the previous June, resulting in a "good month" for Xbox hardware overall. A lot of this was down to the price increase in May 2025 that ruined June 2025 from a sales perspective, while the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 also ensured that Xbox consoles weren't exactly in high demand this time last year.
Nevertheless, Piscatella acknowledges that multiple factors could have played into the improved sales in June 2026:
The big issue here, of course, is that it's probably not getting much better than this in 2026. The new price increases for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S go into effect at the start of August, and Piscatella does mention in his report that both the Switch 2 and PlayStation 5 still outsold Xbox in June despite being significantly down year-on-year.
Still, let's take the positives while we can get them, eh? The console situation is somewhat out of Xbox's hands in regards to the ongoing component crisis, but they clearly have managed to entice new buyers over the past few weeks with new features, plans for exclusives and various other announcements. Project Helix is apparently still going ahead as planned as well, so they're still confident that they can sell impressive numbers in the next generation.