14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has been in a tough position lately, with the Xbox 360 home gaming console lagging behind both the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Nintendo Wii in sales in the second half of 2009. So, the company was quick to point out the good sales numbers posted for the week that ended on November 29, which contained Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
These two days are widely considered to be the beginning of the proper Christmas shopping period, a section of about a month during which console manufacturers and game publisher have the biggest sales of the year and usually heavily discount their products in order to attract as many customers as possible.
Aaron Greenberg, who is the product management director for the Xbox 360, has said via Twitter that “Great #BlackFriday results just in, biggest sales week of the year for #Xbox360, more than 2xs previous week sales.” The short format of the message probably did not allow the Microsoft man to actually say how many units the Xbox 360 sold during the week.
Taking a look at the NPD Group numbers for October 2009, one can easily see that the average for a week of sales in the United States has been somewhere between 60 and 70,000 units, which means that the Thanksgiving week has seen at the most 140,000 new Xbox 360 consoles moved to players in the United States.
Sony has also said that the PlayStation 3 has moved a lot of consoles during the same period. The Japanese hardware manufacturer has claimed that 440,000 devices were sold, meaning that it has more than three times the sales Microsoft claims for the Xbox 360. Nintendo itself is saying that close to half a million of the Wii home gaming console flew off the shelves during the same week.