PS5 sales just fell 58% — and Nintendo won by doing the one thing Sony and Microsoft wouldn't

PlayStation 5 unit sales in the US fell 58% year-over-year in May 2026 — the worst May for the platform since 2000 — and Xbox had its worst month ever, down 12%. Meanwhile Nintendo's Switch 2 grew 38% over the same stretch and became the best-selling console in both units and dollars that month. The difference wasn't marketing or exclusives. It was price: Sony and Microsoft each hiked console prices hard in 2026, chasing memory chip costs that have roughly doubled thanks to AI data centers, while Nintendo hadn't touched its price at all — until now.

The numbers, laid out

Why your console got this expensive

None of these companies are hiking prices because they suddenly feel like it. DRAM and NAND flash — the memory and storage chips inside every console — have jumped anywhere from 2x to 5x in cost over the past couple of years, because AI data centers are buying the same fabs' output and can outbid consumer electronics for it every time. It's the same mechanism driving up GPU prices and pushing SSD and RAM costs to record highs across the whole PC market, and it's not slowing down — storage costs are projected to double again by fall 2027. Microsoft even discontinued the 2TB Xbox Series X outright because the storage inside it stopped being profitable to sell at a normal price. According to a full breakdown of every 2026 console price hike, Xbox Series S saw the biggest single jump of the year at 71%.

Nintendo's edge — and its expiration date

Switch 2 didn't win May 2026 by being a better console than PS5 or Xbox Series X. It won because it was the only one of the three that hadn't gotten more expensive since launch, at a moment when console prices overall averaged $502, up 14% from a year earlier. That's a real, measurable edge, and it's about to disappear. Nintendo is raising the Switch 2's price from $449.99 to $499.99 on September 1, 2026, an 11% hike that's smaller than Sony's or Microsoft's but ends the one thing that made this console different from its rivals all summer. This isn't a new problem for Xbox specifically, either — a survey earlier this year already showed how far behind Xbox has fallen in the console race — but the sales data adds hard numbers to what had mostly been sentiment.

Is this going to get worse

Probably, at least through 2027. None of the underlying causes are easing — AI data center buildouts are accelerating, not slowing, and memory manufacturers have no incentive to prioritize consumer electronics over the vastly more profitable AI contracts. PC gamers are living through the identical squeeze on GPU and RAM pricing, and big holiday releases like GTA 6's next trailer push are landing right into a hardware market that's getting more expensive, not less. If you're holding off on a console purchase hoping prices come back down, the honest answer based on everything reported so far is: not soon.

Watch September 1 for what happens once Nintendo's price edge disappears — if Switch 2 sales cool off even slightly, that confirms price was the actual driver of this summer's numbers, not console quality or exclusives. And watch holiday 2026 pricing across all three platforms; if memory costs keep climbing the way manufacturers say they will, this year's hikes might just be the first round, not the last.