Microsoft sells huge 960,000 Xbox 360s in Black Friday week
updated 06:45 pm EST, Tue November 29, 2011
Xbox 360 has best week ever, nears 1m in one week
Microsoft on Tuesday marked its best week ever for gaming. The company sold over 960,000 Xbox 360 consoles during Black Friday week, getting its best one-week Xbox hardware sales ever even with a holiday. Over 800,000 of those were sold just on Black Friday itself, and it was one of the top sellers at Best Buy.
Over 750,000 Kinect sensors were sold in the same week, although this included both stand-alone upgrades and those bundled with Xbox 360s.
The sales were likely helped by steep price cuts that dropped the game system down by as much as $100. Some of these also included extra games. A slew of big-name games, like Gears of War 3 and Modern Warfare 3, helped at the same time.
While results across the gaming field for the whole month won't arrive until December, they already confirm that Microsoft will have beaten Nintendo yet again in the race for console share. Nintendo publicly stated that it sold 500,000-plus Wiis on Black Friday and isn't likely to have made up for the gap elsewhere in the week. The Japanese gaming firm has been losing ground ever since mid-2010, when the slim Xbox 360, price drops, and other factors eliminated the price advantage that the Wii had.
