Xbox One Wins Console Race During Black Friday, But Sony PS4 Holds Edge For All Of November
These figures come courtesy of Adobe’s annual market-tracking data, which pegged the Xbox One as the fifth best-selling electronics product in the U.S. during Black Friday. It was outpaced by the Apple iPad, Samsung 4K TVs, Apple MacBook Air, and LG TVs. Adobe didn’t indicate how the PlayStation 4 ranked on that Black Friday list, but we’d assume that it wasn’t too far behind the Xbox One.
While Microsoft is likely elated to have beat the PlayStation 4 once again, Adobe’s analysis shows that Microsoft might not get its fifth consecutive monthly sales victory. Adobe’s numbers show that so far this month (November 1st through 24th), the PlayStation 4 has outsold the Xbox One. You can chalk up some of Sony’s strength to the launch of the potent PlayStation 4 Pro.
Both the Xbox One S and PlayStation 4 Slim could be easily had for $250 during the days leading up to Black Friday. Target perhaps had one of the best deals in recent days on the Xbox One S, offering an additional 15 percent off the $250 price for the Battlefield 1 and Minecraft bundles, and throwing in a free 3-month subscription to Xbox Live.
Adobe aggregated data from over 22 billion visits to retail sites, and measured 80 percent of all transactions from the top 100 U.S. retailers.
“Shoppers hit the buy button at unprecedented levels as conversion rates were up nearly a full percent across all devices in the evening hours on Black Friday,” said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst and director for Adobe Digital Insights. “With the full day total coming in at $3.34 billion, Black Friday may have just dethroned Cyber Monday's position as the largest online shopping day of the year.”
Adobe also had some insight into this season’s electronic devices that were most likely to be out of stock. The list shouldn’t surprise, with products like the Nintendo NES Classic Edition, PlayStation VR bundle and PlayStation 4 Call of Duty Black Ops bundle topping the list.
