It is no secret that Microsoft really needs to have a big holiday season, and it looks like the various price cuts and game bundles it has rolled out are getting shoppers to open their wallets.
The Xbox One ruled Black Friday sales, according to market-research firm InfoScout. Microsoft's latest system made up 53 percent of all console sales on one of the biggest shopping days of the year. Sony's PS4, meanwhile, managed to capture 31 percent. The Xbox One was on sale for $330 at a number of big stores like Target and Walmart, and Microsoft bundled it with hit games like "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag" and "Unity." That helped gamers choose the Xbox One over the PlayStation 4, which was $400 bundled with Bungie's sci-fi shooter "Destiny." See the overall breakdown below:
This is clearly good news for Microsoft. The PlayStation 4 has built up a substantial lead over the Xbox One in the past year. Microsoft slashed the price of the console from $500 to $400, and then to $350 until January. If Microsoft can maintain this market share until then, it could make some headway against Sony for overall market share.
To compile this data, InfoScout used two smartphone apps that reward consumers for uploading their purchases by taking pictures of their receipts. The intelligence firm tracks more than 200,000 shoppers, and it gets more than 125,000 receipts on an average day. On Black Friday, consumers uploaded more than 182,000 receipts, which helped InfoScout declare Xbox One the Black Friday winner.
While Microsoft owned the battle against the PS4, the Xbox 360 also continues to sell well. The older system comprised 9 percent of all console sales, which is still better than the Wii U's 6 percent. The PS3 only accounted for 1 percent.
Black Friday is presumably the beginning of the holiday shopping season for gifts, but plenty of people were out buying consoles for themselves.
"Unsurprisingly, 66 percent of InfoScout panelists confirmed that they purchased the console for their kids," InfoScout chief technology officer and co-founder Jon Brelig wrote. "However, it varied greatly by console with over 50 percent of PS4 purchasers buying the console for themselves."
Again, see the breakdown below:
The substantial majority of shoppers who picked up Nintendo's system did so for their kids, and two out of every three people did the same with the Xbox One.
