U.S. video game spending hit $5.3 billion in March, software sales also rose

Players opened their wallets in March for a very specific mix of new releases, and the spending data showed it. Circana said U.S. projected total market video game spending reached $5.3 billion for the month, up 12% from March 2025, while first-quarter spending climbed 5% year over year to $14.6 billion. For a market that has spent much of the past year waiting for a clearer lift, March looked less like a shrug and more like a reset.

The clearest answer to what moved the market sat on the software charts. Circana’s top seven best-selling games for March included MLB The Show 26, WWE 2K26, Marathon, Pokémon Pokopia and Monster Hunter Stories 3: Twisted Reflection. MLB The Show 26 debuted at No. 1 and posted the second-highest launch-month combined physical-and-digital dollar total in franchise history, trailing only MLB The Show 21. That kind of franchise pull is exactly what makes a month like March matter: it is not just one publisher landing a hit, it is a familiar sports series turning annual timing into real dollar flow.

The monthly gains were not confined to boxed releases. Circana said video game content spending rose 8% to $4.5 billion, while related tracking showed a 40% year-over-year increase in digital premium downloads on console and a 20% increase in non-mobile subscription content spending. That matters because it suggests players were not only buying a few headline games, they were spending more across digital channels too. March’s window ran from March 1 through April 4, giving the report a long enough runway to catch the early-life momentum of the month’s biggest launches.

Hardware also had a huge month, and the platform story helped frame the software bounce. Hardware spending jumped 69% to $500 million from $297 million a year earlier, and Circana said the Nintendo Switch 2 remained the second-fastest-selling hardware platform in the United States since tracking began in 1995. Even so, the March data read like a broader spring surge rather than a hardware-only spike.

A few launches underscored how much fresh content was doing the heavy lifting. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company said Pokémon Pokopia sold 2.2 million units worldwide in its first four days, including 1 million in Japan, though Circana tracked only physical sales for the game because Nintendo had not shared digital numbers. Pearl Abyss said Crimson Desert sold 3 million units in less than a week after launch, with one report putting that milestone at five days. Taken together, the month looked less like a random jump and more like a reminder that in games, players still open their wallets fastest when a packed release slate gives them a reason to do it now.