A recently released report from the analyst group InfoScout indicates that the Xbox One may have won over the most wallets this past Black Friday.
Black Friday. For many shoppers, it’s an unparalleled opportunity to get more for less, especially when it comes to things like electronics and video games. Many customers this past weekend, in turn, used the day’s discounts to get their hands on bundles containing Sony and Microsoft’s latest consoles: the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The obvious question, of course, is which one sold better? If emerging reports can be believed, X may mark the spot.
According to a survey conducted by the analyst group InfoScout, as many as 53 percent of shoppers who purchased a game console on Black Friday bought an Xbox One. The PlayStation 4, comparatively, only managed to capture 31 percent of the day’s total sales. Trailing much further behind it were the Xbox 360 with nine percent, the WiiU with six percent and the PS3 with one percent. These percentages were tallied by examining more than 180,000 receipts taken from major retailers “including Walmart, Target, Best Buy, GameStop, Radioshack, and others.”
What’s arguably interesting about these figures is the way they contrast how the consoles have sold the rest of the year. While the Xbox One has built a solid following on the back of high profile releases like Titanfall, the console’s sales have consistently fallen short of the PlayStation 4’s. A possible explanation for the Black Friday disparity could lie with the price of console bundles featured being sold by retailers. An image featured in the InfoScout report showed that the top console purchase at both Walmart and Target was an Assassin’s Creed: Unity Xbox One bundle being sold for $329. In second place at both stores was a PS4 bundle containing Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us: Remastered for $399. While the PS4 bundle contained two games as opposed to one, the lower price tag could have been a strong force for persuading customers to buy an Xbox.
Responses from InfoScout panelists also indicated that as many as 75 percent of console purchasers based their decision on the game it was being bundled with. With 90 percent of reported console sales coming from bundles, the popularity of Assassin’s Creed: Unity (warts and all) could have been a big swaying factor for Microsoft’s gaming machine. Speaking with The Escapist, a Microsoft representative stressed that InfoScout’s figures are not official. That said, if they’re anything close to the truth, this past Friday was a good one for Xbox. We’ve also reached out to Sony to get their take on the report.
Source: InfoScout
