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Xbox Breaks Xbox Black Friday Records; Windows 10 Gaming Continues To Rise

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
I'm more impressed that last month 30% of active Steam users were on Win10. Hopefully we'll see a lot of DirectX 12 adoption for games on PC moving forward.
 

Ollie Pooch

In a perfect world, we'd all be homersexual
Nice to see them get some more success. I'm super impressed with my XB1 after a few weeks - the instant on + resume thing is great and so is laptop streaming/remote play. Some good exclusives too.
 

Karak

Member
No, Sony hasn't said anything, but we all know that Microsoft likes shouting from the rooftops if they win something. The fact that they didn't leads me to those two scenarios.
Ya for sure. And Sony is equally if not moreso brag loving Thats why I asked.
 

allan-bh

Member
Hot damn.

It's doing more than 1.23m this month. The guys in the prediction thread should adjust accordingly.

Last year had price drop early in the month, so probably in this year sales are more concentrated on Black Friday.

But likely sold more than 1 million, what is pretty good.
 

ryan299

Member
How do you figure? Sales were dead until BF week. Say they did 100k leading up to BF week, 750k more is no where 1.2m. Last year they rode into BF with a new $350 price point, they had a strong month, not just a strong week.

They gave away a free game and controller in the beginning of the month and gamestop gave a ton of trade credit when you trade for a new x1. I doubt sales were dead.
 

Javin98

Banned
Ya for sure. And Sony is equally if not moreso brag loving Thats why I asked.
Huh? I don't think Sony loves to brag as much as Microsoft, personally. Also, Sony doesn't put as much attention to the US as Microsoft considering that the US only contributes roughly 30% of the PS4's global sales.
 
Title should be "Xbox Breaks Xbox Black Friday Records", since they seem to have been quite careful to keep referring only to their own previous records.
They didn't even beat the XBox Black Friday record for hardware sales, just the XBox Black Friday record for Live engagement.


I'm really surprised with the hours of Xbox streamed to PC. Would've thought the majority would've done it the other way around (i.e. from computer room to living room).
I thought it didn't work that way.


22% over BF not the whole month and second best week in 15 years of xbox history... but the way it's worded means that it likely includes x1+x360
I wondered the same.

Xbox One console sales at retail were up 22 percent over the same period last year, making it the second biggest Black Friday week in 15 years of Xbox history in the U.S.

For me is pretty clear they're talking only about Xbox One.
For the rest of the entire paragraph, it's pretty clear he's talking about the XBox Family collectively. Remember, this is the same guy who said last holiday, "Bone sales triple in US; approaching 10M shipped," or whatever it was he said.

So yeah, I'd say it's entirely possible that the claim should be read as, "Propelled by a strong increase in Bone sales, the XBox Family also enjoyed its second-strongest Black Friday week ever." He already told us how the Bone did on its own in the first paragraph; better than it'd ever done before.
 

Gxgear

Member
How many people are using the XB1 and for how long. For example, with ftp games coming in fashion on consoles, it might dictate where a game like Hearthstone may show up first.

A developer might not be necessarily interested in the most systems out there, they might be more interested in who is active on a particular system the longest.

Not XBone hours clocked but rather XBL.
 
I'm more impressed that last month 30% of active Steam users were on Win10. Hopefully we'll see a lot of DirectX 12 adoption for games on PC moving forward.
Notice also the dig at OS X and Linux usage. They clearly feel that's an issue that needs to be addressed. Even mocking acknowledgement of other operating systems is more than you'd have gotten a few years back. Saying, "I'm still the king," implies there was some question about it.
 

allan-bh

Member
For the rest of the entire paragraph, it's pretty clear he's talking about the XBox Family collectively. Remember, this is the game guy who said last holiday, "Bone sales triple in US; approaching 10M shipped," or whatever it was he said.

So yeah, I'd say it's entirely possible that the claim should be read as, "Propelled by a strong increase in Bone sales, the XBox Family also enjoyed its second-strongest Black Friday week ever." He already told us how the Bone did on its own in the first paragraph; better than it'd ever done before.

The second best selling week includes all Xbox, so of course MS is talking about Xbox family, but in the beggining clearly said "Xbox One sales" and "making it". The second best is about Xbox One.
 
Whoever has the full time job of writing up PR statements for the Xbox division certainly ears their pay. Perpetually finding new ways to word things and moving goalposts. The only actual (xbox) data point in that whole block of text is "325 million hours gaming on Xbox Live this past week" and even that doesn't define itself entirely. Which platform? With a game loaded? During multiplayer? During any game? Total time logged in? Time with at least 1 controller active? It implies apps aren't included but still isn't clear since they won't give up a number for that. Well, no. The BC hours played is an actual statistic, too. My mistake.

It's a work of art. God. It would take someone an hour to break this down line by line but the TLDR sounds great. Give this person a raise for surviving a rough year, please.

I anxiously await the NPD thread where I have no doubt that Sony and Nintendo will time moving their own goalposts as well. Perhaps we'll get some new measurement categories like "number of blaster shots deflected with lightsabers" or "number of dead Marios". I was originally going to say "number of force chokes" but I believe that was actually used already for the Battlefront beta?
 

Karak

Member
Huh? I don't think Sony loves to brag as much as Microsoft, personally. Also, Sony doesn't put as much attention to the US as Microsoft considering that the US only contributes roughly 30% of the PS4's global sales.

Dear god. Ok. man.

But likely sold more than 1 million, what is pretty good.

Ya not a bad posting.
I'm more impressed that last month 30% of active Steam users were on Win10. Hopefully we'll see a lot of DirectX 12 adoption for games on PC moving forward.

Damn ya that too. Thats pretty insane really.
 

Coxy100

Banned
Some of the sly little digs at Microsoft are a bit pathetic.

Great news - whether it's pr bullshit or not it's great numbers for Xbox - glad to see it doing well. It's clear the xb1 won't catch up with ps4 now - but the numbers are great to see none the less considering the awful start it had.
 
The second best selling week includes all Xbox story, so of course MS is talking about Xbox family, but in the beggining clearly said "Xbox One sales" and "making it". The second best is about Xbox One.
Ah, but the word "it" refers to the Black Friday period, not the Bone specifically.* He doesn't say the Bone was the second-fastest-selling-XBox-during-black-friday ever. He says that, thanks to the Bone, XBox had its second-best Black Friday Week ever (in the US).


*The period was second best. The Bone wasn't second-best.
 
Ah, but the word "it" refers to the Black Friday period, not the Bone specifically.* He doesn't say the Bone was the second-fastest-selling-XBox-during-black-friday ever. He says that, thanks to the Bone, XBox had its second-best Black Friday Week ever (in the US).


*The period was second best. The Bone wasn't second-best.

Ignore the last bit. It clearly states the XB1 alone is up 22% from last year.

Even if the last bit is PR fluff, it's irrelevant. The XB1 would still be above what it did last year.
 

allan-bh

Member
Ah, but the word "it" refers to the Black Friday period, not the Bone specifically. He doesn't say the Bone was the second-fastest-selling-XBox-during-black-friday ever. He says that, thanks to the Bone, XBox had its second-best Black Friday Week ever (in the US).

I don't think so, "making it" means that Xbox One did because the paragraph begins with Xbox One, not Xbox.
 

Elios83

Member
Try substituting "it" with "the Bone" and read it again. Now try again with "the week" instead. See how now it makes sense? :)

It's not clear at all.
It indeed seems to be listing the different factors that contributed to make "it" (this BF period) the second best in Xbox history. Only sure thing is Xbox One 2015 BF up 22% over last year.
Also ww sales just at the Xbox Store....the spin is endless but after their Halo 5 PR...problem is that they want successful headlines at all costs even if the datas are not supporting them.
 
It's not clear at all.
It indeed seems to be listing the different factors that contributed to make "it" (this BF period) the second best in Xbox history. Only sure thing is Xbox One 2015 BF up 22% over last year.
Also ww sales just at the Xbox Store....the spin is endless but after their Halo 5 PR...problem is that they want successful headlines at all costs even if the datas are not supporting them.
Right. It's the second-best week in XBox history, not the second-best week in history for an XBox.
 

RiccochetJ

Gold Member
Not XBone hours clocked but rather XBL.

Well, they're only able to track you if you're logged into XBL. The thing is that they can break down what you're doing when you're logged into XBL. Are you playing a game? How many hours? Are you watching Netflix? How many hours?

For each category, MS can break down how their users are using the XB1 and what they're doing on XBL. They can then go to companies like Netflix and say, "Hey, our users are using your app like this. How about you focus your development efforts our way first."

They could even lure people over depending if that engagement number is better than what their competitors have to offer. There's a reason why MS is focusing on making all of their devices work under Win10. If you take a look at Visual Studio, their huge selling point is that it will be extremely easy to make an app work for Win10 PC's, phones, tablets, and the XB1 with not much work to make them viable for each device.
 

Exquisik

Member
Since Microsoft knows the number for Black Friday, shouldn't they know the number for the month of November as well? I mean if I'm a PR rep and there's an increase YOY for the total hardware for the month of November, I would use that number rather than a specific time like Black Friday weekend. This whole announcement tells me that YOY for Xbox One is down compare to last year for the month of November. Even if they sell 900k during Black Friday, it's not impossible that they sell only 200k for the rest of November, which makes it less than the 1.2 million last year. Don't forget that last year, throughout the month of November, Xbox One was cheaper than the PS4, but that is not the case for this year.

And if you check the bestseller list for Amazon, Gamestop, Best Buy, and Walmart, they all have PS4 at the top during Black Friday weekend and for the month of November. I don't think it will be too hard to imagine that the PS4 might marginally beat the Xbox One this November.
 

despire

Member
So I read this as either that MS doesn't know Sony's numbers or Sony won BF since the PR doesn't mention Xbox as the best selling console.
 

allan-bh

Member
Try substituting "it" with "the Bone" and read it again. Now try again with "the week" instead. See how now it makes sense? :)

I don't agree with you, unless Microsoft tried to misleading people, makes more sense read the phrase as Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday history.

Companies make spin all the time, but mislead is a bit different.
 
The fact that this comes out a couple of days before PSX, where one would expect Sony to trumpet any Black Friday/Novemeber sales numbers (either in the Keynote or in any number of interviews) makes me think this is a preemptive announcement to get some some time in the PR limelight before Sony announces they outsold XB1.

I don't agree with you, unless Microsoft tried to misleading people, makes more sense read the phrase as Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday history.

Companies make spin all the time, but mislead is a bit different.
I don't agree with him either with regards to that sentence, but spin and mislead is the exact same thing. You're saying they won't outright lie, which is true, but the whole point of spin is to mislead the reader into making wrong assumptions.
 

Elios83

Member
I don't agree with you, unless Microsoft tried to misleading people, makes more sense read the phrase as Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday Week history.

Companies make spin all the time, but mislead is a bit different.

Isn't that his point?
Xbox One sales allow us to claim second bigger BF week in Xbox history?
But it's different from Xbox One sales alone were the second biggest in Xbox history.
But really I dunno it's not clear and straightforward.
 

allan-bh

Member
The fact that this comes out a couple of days before PSX, where one would expect Sony to trumpet any Black Friday/Novemeber sales numbers (either in the Keynote or in any number of interviews) makes me think this is a preemptive announcement to get some some time in the PR limelight before Sony announces they outsold XB1.

Sony is not bragging much about US sales, they aren't making a complete PR for NPD, just a brief commentary every month.
 
I don't agree with you, unless Microsoft tried to misleading people, makes more sense read the phrase as Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday history.

Companies make spin all the time, but mislead is a bit different.
Wut? That's exactly what it says. =/

What it doesn't say that the Bone's performance ranks #2 on the all-time chart of weekly sales for a given XBox.

It says XBox had its second-best week, thanks to the Bone. He doesn't mention it, but I suspect that crazy sale they had on the 360 helped some too.
 

allan-bh

Member
I don't agree with him either with regards to that sentence, but spin and mislead is the exact same thing. You're saying they won't outright lie, which is true, but the whole point of spin is to mislead the reader into making wrong assumptions.

No, spin is shape the presentation of an information in the most favorable way possible. Mislead for me is when you deliberately deceive people.
 
No, spin is shape the presentation of an information in the most favorable way possible. Mislead for me is when you deliberately deceive people.

I'm not gonna start arguing semantics here, but what serversurfer is trying to argue the sentence says (which, again, I think he's wrong about) is exactly the type of thing we see in PR spin pieces all the time. Regardless of whether you consider 'mislead' to be a more extreme, morally reprehensible level of 'spin' (or whether you consider them to be separate things altogether), I don't really see anything there that would warrant that sentence to become one instead of the other.
 

allan-bh

Member
Wut? That's exactly what it says. =/

What it doesn't say that the Bone's performance ranks #2 on the all-time chart of weekly sales for a given XBox.

It says XBox had its second-best week, thanks to the Bone. He doesn't mention it, but I suspect that crazy sale they had on the 360 helped some too.

Yeah, thanks to Xbox One. There's nothing about Xbox 360, the PR says that Xbox One make it.

You're assuming that includes Xbox 360 but this is a speculation. Maybe you are correct, but my interpretation is different.
 

allan-bh

Member
Isn't that his point?
Xbox One sales allow us to claim second bigger BF week in Xbox history?
But it's different from Xbox One sales alone were the second biggest in Xbox history.
But really I dunno it's not clear and straightforward.

His point is that the phrase doesn't mean just Xbox One but Xbox One and 360. For me is Xbox One alone.
 

Elios83

Member
His point is that the phrase doesn't mean just Xbox One but Xbox One and 360. For me is Xbox One alone.

I know but if you say that you read the phrase as "Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday history" to me you're agreeing with him as well because that phrase doesn't mean Xbox One sales alone were the second best in Xbox history. It means that Xbox One sales were the leading factor in achieving that goal.
Btw I don't think that 360 sales were particularly huge in any case. 100k best case?
Still it would better if sales were XB1 alone.
 
Yeah, thanks to Xbox One. There's nothing about Xbox 360, the PR says that Xbox One make it.

You're assuming that includes Xbox 360 but this is a speculation. Maybe you are correct, but my interpretation is different.
Second-best week for XBox, not second-best for an XBox.

Yes, it's thanks to the increase in Bone sales. Maybe the best BF for XB was last year, and they sold 500k XB2 and 500k XB3. So if they sold 300k XB2 this year but still managed a total of 900k XB to have their #2 week ever, that'd be "thanks to" the 20% increase of XB3 sales to 600k, right?

Oh, my bad then. I haven't really kept track of the features, but just recall reading some posters' intentions on doing that.
Oh, me either. lol Thought I remembered some being baffled/angered it didn't work like that. /shrug
 

allan-bh

Member
I know but if you say that you read the phrase as "Xbox One sales lead to the second bigger week in Xbox Black Friday history" to me you're agreeing with him as well because that phrase doesn't mean Xbox One sales alone were the second best in Xbox history. It means that Xbox One sales were the leading factor in achieving that goal.
Btw I don't think that 360 sales were particularly huge in any case. 100k best case?
Still it would better if sales were XB1 alone.

The PR says that Xbox One sales were up "making it" the second best BF week in Xbox history.

What is making? Xbox One. For me the phrase doesn't allow to include Xbox 360. Maybe an english professor could clear up.

360 sales probably was very low.
 

ethomaz

Banned
Great but...

most critically acclaimed holiday lineup of exclusives in Xbox history
This is a flat out lie... it is no where near the most critically acclaimed holiday lineup of Xbox history lol

And they uses MAU again :D
 
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