Xbox consoles may not be sitting under a lot of Christmas trees this holiday season. Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo have always been very competitive with each other and while there have always been clear “winners” for each generation, this generation has been particularly rough for one platform. Although PlayStation hasn’t been without its struggles with game cancellations and disastrous launches like Concord, Xbox has been having a difficult time gaining any kind of momentum. Multiple price hikes on Xbox hardware and an increase to the cost of Xbox Game Pass have left players frustrated. In addition to that, layoffs and studio closures have also killed hope for some highly anticipated games like Perfect Dark.
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Many are wondering what’s going on with Xbox after a lot of these devastating blows. There were concerns a few months ago that Xbox was going to stop selling consoles entirely after reports that retailers had scaled back on Xbox products in-store. Some even reported that the consoles were outright pulled from shelves. Target clarified that it still sells Xbox products, however. With that said, the Microsoft-owned platform is clearly making changes to how it gets the console to players and it may not be going very well.
Xbox Struggles During Black Friday
A new report from Circana, a firm that specializes in gaming sales data, claims that Xbox was outsold by a console you’ve probably never heard of during the week of Black Friday. According to the report, PlayStation 5 accounted for 47% of hardware sales that week, Nintendo Switch 2 made up 24%, but surprisingly, Xbox wasn’t the third best-selling piece of hardware. It was another device, known as NEX Playground, which drove 14% of hardware sales. The NEX Playground is a Kinect-like system, focused on motion controlled games aimed at families who want a fun way to stay active.
That means Xbox made up less than 14% of hardware sales during the most popular week of the year for shopping. A big reason for this is that Xbox didn’t get very competitive with its Black Friday deals. Xbox stock also seems to be quite limited, possibly as a result of the company knowing that there isn’t much demand for a console that costs $650. It’s hard to imagine Xbox having a great holiday season sales-wise as a result of this. Maybe there’s a chance Xbox tries to get its next-gen console out the door sooner in order to capitalize on unrealized power and is weaning people off of its current console.
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