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Players' spending patterns are becoming increasingly polarized according to Mat Piscatella, a veteran industry analyst at Circana. On a recent podcast appearance, Piscatella said AAA games, which tend to be priced at $70 USD nowadays, are still selling well for more "affluent" groups, while players with less money are being driven towards more mobile and free games.
Appearing on Kyle Bosman's Delayed Input podcast, Piscatella claims, "Because of changes in the marketplace, for example, things becoming more expensive particularly in everyday spending categories like food and housing… there's been a separation in the spending patterns of folks."
He continues, "The people who are more affluent, they have more money, they're continuing to spend as if prices haven't really changed. They're spending more, getting less, and they just keep going, because they're in a position where they might not even realize the prices have gone up in some areas."
Piscatella refers to some of this behavior as part of a phenomenon called "quiet inflation," where people with affluence don't entirely realize or pay attention to the increasing costs of products in certain categories, like consoles, that are bought infrequently. In his own words, "People just don't realize because they're not paying attention."
These consumers, according to Piscatella, are having "no problems spending $70 on Ghost of Yotei, spending more on a PS5 than they would've, or buying a Switch 2."
On the other hand, Piscatella has found that players who are, for example, struggling to make rent or having to deal with the rising costs of groceries, are shifting to markets that are more affordable, like free-to-play titles such as Roblox or Fortnite.
They are also, according to his hypothesis, likely gravitating towards subscriptions like Game Pass and pulling back on buying games at retail price, especially at the high end. Later in their conversation, Piscatella states that membership services, like Nintendo Switch Online and PlayStation Plus, have been enjoying solid growth throughout 2025. Fascinatingly, even MMOs, including older titles like Star Wars: The Old Republic, have gotten a good bump from this shift in spending.
The result of all this movement is what Piscatella dubs a "K-shaped economy" where, according to Bosman, the "rich get richer and poor getting poorer…and there's just nobody in between."
