Xbox One Sales Broke Records During Black Friday
The Xbox One received quite a bit of attention from anxious shoppers during the week of Black Friday, November 21 – 27, according to Microsoft. The gaming console, the third in the Xbox console family and the successor to the Xbox 360, has been selling faster than it ever has, and the wide array of deals on offer made this most recent Black Friday the second biggest Black Friday in Xbox history, including record-setting and record-breaking sales for the Xbox One. During the week of November 21, there was a 22 percent jump in Xbox One sales, Xbox Live subscriptions increased by 40 percent, and various accessories, games, and hardware for both the Xbox One and the Xbox 360 went up by 57 percent.
Microsoft currently has a slew of bundles available for gamers, but their Gears of War: Ultimate Edition Xbox One bundle ended up being the most popular, according to TechnoBuffalo. The bundle, costing $299.99, includes the Matte Black 500GB Xbox One console, a new Xbox One wireless controller, with a few other features geared towards loyal fans of the Gears of War series. The Microsoft store also had some very nice deals for gamers, including the Xbox One bundle that came with $50 0ff, a $60 gift card and one extra game at no additional cost. Best Buy had a couple of the best bundle deals of the season. Forbes reports that one was a 40-inch Samsung LED TV and a Lego Movie: The Videogame Xbox One bundle for the price of $499.99, and the other was a bundle that included a 1 TB Xbox One with Rise of the Tomb Raider as well as 2013?s Tomb Raider for the price of $349.99.
Phil Spencer, division head of Xbox, has been confident that the Xbox One platform will once again lead the industry. “This is a great time to come to Xbox One,” Spencer says. “When you look at the totality of what’s happening this fall, it’s a really interesting time. We want to lead and we want to be bold.” Xbox usage in general also shot up recently. Globally, Microsoft reports that consumers clocked in a total of 325 million gaming hours on Xbox Live. On the Xbox One console alone, hours spent gaming shot up 196 percent in comparison to the same period in 2014. One item which did phenomenally well was the Xbox One Elite controller, priced at $150, which quickly sold out at most retail stores.
@ZeZZeX It’s tough as I don’t want to overpromise. Demand has just exceeded our planning. If you find one and you want it, pick it up, sorry
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) November 27, 2015
Phresh. — #Elite #XBOXONE #XBOXONEElite
A photo posted by Joel Barron (@jbtech17) on
Since Windows 10 launched in July, gamers have streamed over 5 million hours of Xbox One game content to Windows 10 PCs. Fallout 4 received the most amount of streaming within the month of November. Call of Duty: Black Ops III for the Xbox One is currently going for for $29.99, which is half the usual price, and Star Wars Battlefront has also had its price slashed, selling for 29.99.
On November 22, 2013, its day of release, Microsoft had sold one million Xbox One consoles within the first 24 hours of release. InfoScout tracked a total of 102,000 shopping receipts and based on those, 1,500 of them included a purchase of either a video game or a video game console. During that Black Friday sales period, the Xbox One was the highest-selling console.
[Photo by Mark Davis/Getty Images for Microsoft]
