Ahh, Black Friday. The one day of the year when my fellow Americans collectively stand in line all night, trample Wal-Mart employees to death, pepper spray each other, step over the bodies of collapsed elderly shoppers, and get thrown to the ground via violent leg sweeps by the Police.
Why? Because saving a few bucks on video games (and other items) is apparently just that important to some shoppers.
Regardless, lower prices mean higher sales and no one saw that result as much as Microsoft did. They just announced that on the week of Black Friday, 960,000 Xbox 360 units were sold in the U.S. with Kinect also selling strong at 750,000 units (console bundles and stand-alone units combined). Of the 960,000 consoles sold, 800,000 of them were sold during the 24-hour Black Friday event.
There’s no word just yet from Sony on how many PS3’s sold during that time frame but Nintendo checked in at 500,000 Wii systems during the entire week. They also made mention that 3DS sales were up 325% for the week of Black Friday.
Putting my disdain for this particular event aside, a lot of people take part in this day full of bargains and mayhem, and the video game market is feeling the effect. Almost a million units moved in just one week is extremely impressive when you consider the console’s age and the fact that these numbers are only for one region.
When (read: if) Sony decides to release their figures for PS3 sales, we’ll be sure to bring them to you so we can all have a good ol’ fashioned fanboy debate about which console is better, and how stupid consumers are to have bought more/less of the console you love/hate.
Source: VG247
KeRaSh
Impressive. I heared about the woman pepperspraying other shoppers on The Daily Show. It’s ridiculous. Apparently they didn’t even do anything about it so she walked out of the store with a (or multiple?) brand new Xbox 360(s) as if nothing happened.
Awayze
The 360 must have been really cheap.
Proxzyn
There’s a fanboy joke in there somewhere :P
TrialByFire
It’s end of life, so Microsoft are keen to ditch as many as possible to make way for the new Xbox mid 2012.
Flex are already making proto runs.
cc_star
That’s pretty impressive, nice increase of Kinect install-base as well
MayContainEvil
What kind of discount are we talking about here? I sure wouldn’t trample someone for a 20% discount but if it were more like 50% I might deign to partake of the trampling.
IAmJacksMedullaOblongata
$100 off.
MICKY17
That is some mightily impressive numbers for MS. I reckon Sony sold 600k PS3’s. Ooh just imagine if Vita had been out in time for Black Friday?
KeRaSh
I don’t think they’d be able to chop off anything from the price so close to the release to make it even remotely Black Friday worthy.
Zephyre
Just out of interest, any idea if the Kinnect bundle was also included as an individual sale? If not, those numbers are mighty impressive!
gazzagb
Impressive, doubt the PS3 did as well, 360’s cheaper so makes a better xmas present.
skibadee
other stores getting there xmas stock maybe.
Foxhound_Solid
Gaming is huge now. Makes me very happy :-)
bacon_nuts
I’d agree with you, and yet i still only know people who play COD or FIFA, it’s really bloody annoying…
Grey_Ghost13
How many of these were to replace 360’s with the red ring o death???
Sorry couldn’t resist, I’ll return to my fanboy corner now!
cam_manutd
How much was the PS3 discounted for?
TrialByFire
Doesn’t really need heavy discounts, it’s very profitable and selling well as-is.