Console Exclusives Remain Top Driver for Gamers, But Momentum Is Fading
- Sagar Mankar
- May 2
- 2 min read
Console exclusives remain the top reason gamers choose a platform, but their pull is weakening, according to new data.
A Q1 2026 consumer survey from Circana shows that 41% of active US gamers play on a console because of exclusive titles. It is still the leading reason. But it is down eight points compared to the same survey from Q1 2025, which raises some fair questions about where console gaming is headed.
For context, Circana is an American market research firm that tracks the video game industry closely. The data comes from their Future of Video Games consumer survey, which gathered responses from 2,500 active US video game players aged 13 and above. The sample was weighted to reflect representative distribution of platform use and investment.
Respondents were asked a straightforward question: "Why do you play games on a Console?" The top five answers were:
There are games I want to play that are exclusive to a console: 41% (down 8 pts from Q1 2025)
Friends or family also play on Console: 38%
Easier to play together with friends or family: 37%
Prefer to play games in a more casual setting (e.g., living room): 36% (down 4 pts from Q1 2025)
Have more options to buy physical games for consoles: 24%
What stands out beyond the raw numbers is the year-over-year decline. Exclusives dropped eight percentage points since last year. The preference for casual living-room play also slid by four points. Both of these are meaningful shifts, even if exclusives still hold the top spot.
Circana's Mat Piscatella acknowledged on BlueSky that "this isn't the whole story," and he is right. Looking at Circana's player engagement tracker from the week ending April 18, the most-played games across PlayStation and Xbox include NBA 2K26, Fortnite, Roblox, and Call of Duty. None of those are platform exclusives. They are live service titles with massive, sustained user bases that have little to do with which console someone owns.
That said, exclusives still matter when it comes to hardware sales. As per reporting by Chris Dring at The Game Business, the launch of God of War Ragnarok in November 2022 caused PS5 sales to spike 116% in Japan that week. In the UK, 38% of all PS5 units sold that month were part of the God of War Ragnarok hardware bundle. Those are hard numbers to ignore.
The Switch 2 is perhaps the clearest current example of a platform driven almost entirely by its exclusive library. Nintendo has always leaned into this, and it continues to work for them.
