Earlier today, I did a report on US video game market data shared by Circana. Circana publishes reports every month on which games are selling very well, which consoles are performing better than others, and how the industry is doing in the US as a whole. This kind of thing is mostly useful for experts who actually work in the space and need this data to make decisions or predictions, but it’s also useful and nice to just have it in the public eye. It helps us better understand why certain games may be created, can be used to identify causes and effects over time, and generally improves our overall understanding of how video games are created, bought, sold, and played. Unfortunately, Circana reporting has recently lost two very valuable data sources: Xbox and EA. As of July 2026, Xbox “is no longer a participating publisher of the digital data sharing panel” with Circana, as the company confirmed today (Xbox and EA have not yet responded to a request for comment). When I contacted Circana to see which publishers remained on the panel, they also informed me that EA had recently dropped its membership, “the timing aligned with its privatization.” What does that mean? Well, in order for Circana to tell us how well things sold, it needs someone who knows that information to pass it on. For physical games, that information comes from retailers and a few other sources that track purchases. But for digital sales made through digital stores like the eShop, PlayStation Store, and Microsoft Store, that data must come from the platform owners or the companies that actually sell the games (the publishers). Circana’s “digital data sharing panel” is essentially a group of publishers who voluntarily share some or all of that digital data, and until recently, Xbox and EA were part of it. That means they shared data about games sold in their stores, so we had accurate information about how well games sold in Xbox and EA digital stores were doing in each Circana report. This was in stark contrast to, say, Nintendo, which doesn’t share digital data and whose appearance on Circana’s charts is based on (well-informed) estimates and analysis. In the past, when companies like Ubisoft and Take-Two left the panel, it was helpful that Circana could still get an idea of the digital sales of its games through stores like Xbox, even if it didn’t get them from other places (Take-Two eventually returned to the panel, Ubisoft did not). Xbox abandonment is a big problem in particular. Not only does it eliminate transparency on Xbox’s first-party digital games in the US (including Call of Duty, you know, the most consistently massive annual franchise of all time), it also further obscures the sales of any other publisher that doesn’t already voluntarily share data with Circana, like Ubisoft and now EA. As a result, this month’s software charts are full of guesswork. This is not the fault of Circana’s analysts, who do excellent data-driven analytical work. At this point, it’s this or nothing, and I’ll take an intelligent guess any day. I also expect this problem to get worse in the coming years. Digital sales already account for a large portion of overall sales, which means that just getting physical data hardly gives us the full picture. PlayStation will completely end disc production in 2028, meaning we’ll be completely reliant on PlayStation to tell companies like Circana what’s happening with sales of their new first-party games, and PlayStation could always look at what Xbox and Nintendo are doing and decide that’s available too. Xbox is also expected to do the same when finalizing the discs; Its physical sales already seem quite low compared to its competitors. And we no longer know anything regarding sales on Steam or Blizzard (via Battle.net sales). For now, we are left with Bandai Namco, Capcom, Crystal Dynamics, Disney Interactive Studios, Eidos, Konami, Plaion, Sega, Sony, Square Enix, Take-Two and Warner Bros. on the panel. Wow. It’s also worth noting that I’ve seen several posts from people suggesting that Xbox has also pulled out of Game Sales Data (GSD), which serves a similar function to Circana, but in Europe, but no word from official sources yet. I am reaching out and working to confirm it. If true, this is an even greater loss of transparency and data. For most people who play video games, there is no expectation that they care how many copies a game sells or how much money it makes. But the gradual erosion of transparency we’ve seen in the industry is ultimately detrimental to gamers anyway, because it allows companies to more tightly control the narratives around their games. If analysts and journalists can’t see accurate numbers, companies can easily lie or obfuscate what’s happening in a game. They may claim that something was unpopular and use that to justify a firing, or try to excuse terrible, anti-consumer decision-making by saying something is more popular than it is. More than anything, I don’t want my information diet surrounding my hobby to be controlled by multi-billion dollar corporations that exist only to make money off of me. I prefer to have accurate information available when I need it, or when a journalist or analyst needs it to tell me something that is relevant to my life and habits. The games industry as a whole is becoming less transparent every day in dozens of different and irritating ways, and I’m worried that soon we won’t be able to see anything clearly. The title of this article was changed after publication to specify that data is no longer shared with Circana.
