That is exactly what they are doing. Microsoft lists the factors like saying point one, two, and three, and then says what those points led to. Let's break down the PR statement into the points being made and follow that with the conclusion:
- Point #1: Worldwide Xbox Black Friday sales in the Xbox Store broke records with an increase of 57 percent across Xbox One and Xbox 360,
- Point #2: global Xbox Live Gold subscriptions were up over 40 percent,
- Point #3: and U.S. Xbox One console sales at retail were up 22 percent over the same period last year,
- Conclusion: making it the second biggest Black Friday week in 15 years of Xbox history in the U.S.
An analogous sentence structure would be:
You eat my food, don't clean up after yourself, and late paying your share of the the rent, making you the worst roommate I've ever had.
The key is the
", and" between point #2 and point #3 indicating that all three phrases should be taken as items in a list. Without that interpretation Point #1 and Point #2 aren't grammatically correct. They'd have to be followed by periods, not commas.
This is correct, actually.
That'd only be true if PR statements were not crafted intentionally to deceive. That's the whole point of PR. Have you seen the amount of tortured logic politicians use to make statements favorable to themselves? If you are not looking for double meanings and intentional ambiguities in PR statements then you are likely being dupped. Microsoft has a history of being misleading so it's not out of the normal to think they'd do so again. In fact you'd have to expect it.
This is also correct.
With Halo 5 they said games and hardware so was clear they're "innovated" including Xbox One console sales.
Now they just said "second biggest in 15 years", after commenting on Xbox One sales, so It's not clear that refer to consoles, games, accessories, and all.
Sorry, but EvenHorizon nailed it. We've established and agreed that he's saying this was the second-biggest week ever for XBox, right? Yet you
simultaneously hold the
contradictory position that he's claiming it was the second-biggest week for
an XBox, when he said nothing of the sort. He says
three factors contributed to this being the second-biggest week in XBox History; strong worldwide sales in the XBox Store, a global increase in Gold subscriptions, and an increase in US Bone sales. I know the way he wrote it makes it very confusing, but the scope of the contributing factors does not affect the scope of the examined result. Here's another example.
"Consumers flocked to the launch of the 2016 Camero, making this the third-best quarter in GM's 150-year history." That doesn't mean they sold a billion Cameros though. It just means the Camero sales helped push them past the
former Third-Best-Quarter-of-All-Time. Without the increase in Camero sales, they prolly just woulda had the fourth-best quarter.
So yeah, I was trying to give them a little credit and not distract from the main point which is that
in no way did he say Bone sold ~800k last week but it's pretty clear that last week was the second-best Black Friday Week for XBox Family
in terms of revenue. So here's the even shadier part. A big part of the reason revenues were so high was because they sold so many Bones, right? And a big part of the reason they sold so many Bones was because they were effectively knocking like $100 or more off of the price through discounts and add-ons, right? Except all of the discounts and add-ons don't actually reduce the revenue they book. A $350 console on sale for $250 is booked as $350 in revenue, and then $100 in "marketing expenses" are tallied in a completely different part of the spreadsheet. So while we know their XBox revenue was the second-highest ever, that doesn't tell us anything about their
cost-of-revenue. I suspect that was
also their second-highest ever, actually. Likely, they were both second to the 2014 results.
Just thinking, Black Friday falls on a different date each year doesn't it? So saying 'the same period' could mean a date range rather than the specific days of Black Friday weekend?
Or am I just overthinking it a little?
Probably. Black Friday Week would just refer to the reporting period that includes Black Friday. Reporting periods run Sun-Sat in the US, and Mon-Sun in Asia. I think EU follows US, but I'm not sure.
I think it's pretty easy to understand how this can be the biggest Black Friday week in Xbox history
Second-biggest.
LOL. Ok, wow, never knew all these things until you pointed them out to me. Thanks so much for the life advice.
Pretty snarky response for someone who just advised we stop wasting time trying to figure out what actually happened.
If XBO is down YoY (which I think it will be the case) then the main reason for that happening won't be because this year deals were worse than last year's, it will be because PS4 was very competitive this year. I mean PS4 and XBO are basically fighting for the same audience.
Last year, XBO had almost no competition in the weeks before BF.
Agreed.
