Xbox Breaks Its Own Black Friday Records
In a blog post from Microsoft, the company announced a highly successful Black Friday and overall November both for Xbox and Windows 10. The post describes “record Xbox One sales in the U.S. and Xbox Store sales worldwide” throughout Black Friday week.
The hard numbers given include a total of 325 million gaming hours logged on Xbox Live in the past week, and over 4 million hours of play for Xbox 360 games on Xbox One since the launch of Backward Compatibility on November 12. Microsoft also reported for Windows 10 that players spent more hours gaming on it than on Windows 8 during the holiday week for the first time since its launch. Also since its launch, over 5 million hours of Xbox One content has been streamed to Windows 10. Fallout 4 was the most-streamed game on Windows 10 in November.
Everything else not having to do with hours played is a bit more vague, dealing exclusively in percents. For Microsoft, “Black Friday week” was considered to be November 21-27. Here are the highlights:
- Xbox Store Black Friday week sales increased by 57% worldwide compared to last year
- Xbox Live Gold subscriptions are up 40% from Black Friday week last year
- Xbox One retail sales for the console were up 22% in the US compared to Black Friday week last year. This year’s Black Friday week was Xbox’s 2nd best in 15 years.
- Xbox One and Xbox 360’s total paid unique users for the Xbox Store is up by 55% compared to Black Friday week last year
- The Xbox One Gears of War: Ultimate Edition bundle was the best-selling of Xbox’s console bundles
Without comparisons to the PS4 or any real hard numbers from last year, it’s difficult to draw any useful conclusions as to what this means. The NPD numbers on December 10 should help clarify exactly how record-breaking Black Friday actually was for Microsoft. Nonetheless, this seems to have been a highly successful holiday for the company, particularly in terms of engagement. It will be interesting to find out if Sony was able to match their success.