Xbox has now made another decision that has the industry a little confused. According to Circana’s confirmation, starting from July 2026, Xbox will no longer participate in its “Digital Data Sharing” program. In other words, when Circana counts U.S. game sales in the future, it will no longer be able to obtain complete sales data related to the Xbox digital store.
EA also quit together, and Circana lost two big players!
What’s even more coincidental is that Xbox isn’t the only company exiting. EA also recently stopped providing digital sales data to Circana, and the timing coincided with the company’s completion of privatization. In the past, Circana used data provided by platform operators and publishers, combined with retail channel data, to sort out the sales performance of the U.S. game market. Therefore, after Xbox and EA leave, the integrity of future data will naturally be affected.
Digital games are becoming more and more important, but data is starting to decrease
The problem is that players no longer have to go to a physical store to take the box home when buying games. Digital platforms such as Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo eShop have long become the main purchasing channels. If Circana cannot obtain digital sales data provided by the platform or publisher, it can only rely on other sources or even extrapolated figures. In other words, when everyone looks at the US game sales list in the future, the actual performance of Xbox-related works may be more difficult to judge than before.
If Xbox doesn’t announce it, it will be easier for the outside world to guess.
The reason why this matter has attracted attention is also related to Xbox’s market performance and strategic changes in recent years. Xbox no longer discloses complete hardware sales data as it did in the past, and this year it has undergone a large-scale restructuring and laid off about 3,200 people. Now that even digital sales data is no longer provided to Circana, there will naturally be an additional question mark for the outside world: Do you not want to make it public, or do you think these data are not that important anymore? Microsoft has not yet provided a reason for its withdrawal.