Xbox One Wins Black Friday; Hackers Take Down Xbox Live

Microsoft’s Xbox Live weathered a hacker attack last night that took it offline for five hours, dampening what must have been a celebratory mood in Redmond HQ over word that Xbox One, helped by a price cut and game bundling, had won the Black Friday gaming console wars.

With overall Black Friday sales slipping, as Marketing Daily’s Sarah Mahoney reported yesterday, Xbox One was “apparently shooting the lights out,” Mike Snider reports in USA Today.

“The Xbox One is the #1 ranking console sold during Black Friday — and the #2 product overall behind a 16 Gigabyte iPad Mini, says market tracker Infoscout,” Snider continues. “That puts Microsoft’s next-generation console well ahead of the PlayStation 4 at 31% in the battle for Black Friday market share. The older Xbox 360 took #3 at 9%.”

advertisement

advertisement

Forbes contributor Dave Thier ledes with “The usual caveat: the only truly reliable numbers for console sales come from either Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony, public companies that would risk accusations of fraud by giving inaccurate stats. All other sources come with their own sets of shortcomings and assumptions.”

That said, Thier concludes by suggesting that the results are “good news for all gamers” in that Microsoft’s new strategy — “a slightly pared-down console focused on video games for an excellent price … could force Sony’s hand into either new discounts, services or both.”

The InfoScout results are culled from 102,000 panelists who submitted more than 180,000 receipts from majors retailers, Polygon’s Brian Crecente reports on Yahoo! Tech, with 1,500 of those purchases including consoles.

“Adding a bit of context to those market share numbers are where and how people purchased these consoles. According to InfoScout, 90% of all console purchases on Black Friday were of bundles, with 75% of the panelists saying that the included game was the major influencer on their purchase,” Crecente adds.

The Xbox One bundle with “Assassin’s Creed Unity” — a historical action adventure game set in Paris during the French Revolution — was the top seller. The PlayStation 4 “Grand Theft Auto V” bundle set in a “misogynistic” cyberworld near you, as a Change.org petition would have it — finished at No. 2 at both Walmart and Target, Jason Dunning reports on PlayStationLifeStyle.net.

“The Xbox One has trailed the PS4 in overall sales since both launched in 2013, but a temporary $50 price drop, which made Microsoft’s latest cheaper than the PS4, helped nudge sales in its favor,” reports Thomas Halleck in International Business Times.

“Pricing actions that are taking place, particularly within this Christmas season, driven by Microsoft around reductions plus a lot of bundled software, I think will continue to help pull the consumer into the new consoles,” EA CFO Black Jorgensen tells Halleck.

In other Xbox news, “Microsoft is said to be working on a fitness wearable that would work alongside its Xbox One games console,” Gerald Lynch re-reports on Gizmodo UK. The original source is Joe Officer, head of distributor Exertis Micro-P’s Attach division, who told British tech journal PCR that “we can expect to see Microsoft rolling out a spate of devices next year in this space.

“These will be linked to the Xbox One which has loads of health and fitness apps already in it,” Officer elaborates. “Add that to real time heart rate monitors, health bands, scales and video sensors and users will have day in, day out, real-time monitoring of themselves."

Meanwhile, “hackers belonging to the ‘Lizard Squad’ … tweeted a short message at 8:37 p.m. Eastern celebrating their latest exploit: "Xbox Live #offline,” PC Mag’s Damon Poeter reports.

The group “took 'credit' for the outage on Twitter, and is threatening to do it again over Christmas, because some people are just like that,” as IGNs Lucy O’Brien put it.

“It will be annoying if PSN and Xbox Live goes down for Christmas during the days people have off from work or school. It looks like these guys don’t care,” observes Damian Seeto on attackofthefanboy.com. “You better be prepared to play offline video games if these guys are still around…”

Or, heaven forfend, get out and shoot some F2F hoops and get those heart rates up with hackers who, whatever else you can say about them, aren’t hiding behind supervillian monikers Stan Lee would have rejected on a bad day at the Marvel office.

1 comment about "Xbox One Wins Black Friday; Hackers Take Down Xbox Live".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Adam Hartung from spark partners, December 2, 2014 at 6:35 p.m.

    But, Microsoft loses money on every xBox it sells. At regular prices xBox is an unprofitable product. After $50 discounts and offering software/game bundles that further cost Microsoft each unit out the door is a net negative to the bottom line. How can investors applaud this as a "win." It's as if the winner in a battle was the one who lost the most soldiers! Forbes pointed out back in February that investors would be better off if Microsoft gave xBox to Nintendo - even for free! http://onforb.es/1blw0aB

Next story loading loading..