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2022 Holiday sales report: Xbox Series X wins Black Friday, Nintendo Switch wins Thanksgiving. Top games: COD: Modern Warfare II and GOW: Ragnarok.

Shoppers nationwide spent a total of $9.12 billion on Black Friday in online sales, an increase of 2.3% from last year.

Top products purchased on the shopping holiday included the Xbox Series X, toys for a children's cartoon character called "Bluey," Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, drones, and MacBook computers. Most shoppers bought an average of two to three items per purchase.

Shoppers opted to use the "buy now, pay later" payment option 78% more often than the week before Black Friday, increasing the service's revenue by 81%. This comes a year after a historic holiday season for "buy now, pay later" services. Salesforce found the use of the service shot up 29% year over year during November's Cyber Week. PayPal's service similarly saw a 400% increase on Black Friday compared to the same day in 2020.
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Er, well. Seems that maybe Sony didn't have enough PS5 stock after all. Also, Microsoft may have puled the trigger on those promos, price cuts, and furniture company collabs for the Series S too early as there were deals all month leading up to Black Friday, so anyone who wanted a Series S probably already brough tone.

Meanwhile, it seems Microsoft held back a lot of Series X stock for Black Friday, while the Switch was apparently a popular purchase the day before on Thanksgiving along with GOW. I wonder how many of those buyers brought two?

On Black Friday, I would assume many of the Series X purchases were accompanied by Modern Warfare II which also was a top seller on the charts. This is despite the PS5 having the marketing deals, which I attribute to both PS5 not having enough stock and possibly COD now being linked in consumers minds to Xbox due to the current ongoing transaction.

Well, this was quite the surprise. But it's also true you can never predict the buying patterns of the average consumer going off conversations on gaming boards. Who would have though on here Instapots and Drones would be top sellers on Thanksgiving and Black Friday for example. It's always intriguing to see the gap in what the average consumer buys compared to the average gamer.

Of course these are only the top 5 most popular for each day, I'm sure there's more games, electronics, and consoles in a top 10 or top 20, but considering what topped the charts, it's quite the surprise. I assume this will be similar when other reports come out like last year.

(The roblox is for the toys btw not the game)

EDIT: Google Trends charts that came out midday yesterday around the time this report was widely spread
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Looks like for the month it could go either way, even if Xbox won BF itself.
 
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Confused Season 3 GIF by The Simpsons

How did XSX win ahead of XSS?

I mean from like Nov 2nd the XSS was on sale, and then got price cuts, and promos and collabs with furniture companies and more sales and promos all the way up to BF. I'm sure it was still a top seller but a lot of people who wanted it probably already had the S, so the Series X was the big console that people went after instead since the X wasn't as available, and not on sales through multiple deals since the start of the month.
 
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Quasicat

Member
Unless I were to hop online, nothing was open here on Thanksgiving except for Kroger, which sells none of the stuff on the list. Our Walmart, GameStop, and Kohls all had signs up saying they were closing on Thursday for their employees.
 
They were able to compile this information across the entire USA and all retail channels both physical and online in less than 24 hours? Impressive.

They track over 1 trillion visits to over 85% of retailers (online) nationwide. Nation Retail Federation, which tracks more brick and mortar is reporting similar results.

I suspect any reports after from anyone else like last year, will also have similar results.
 
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Those unordered lists are hot products, not rankings or winners. I think you may be reading a bit too much into the Adobe report.

Those are the top 5 most popular products for each day. There are other reports that are able to have industry level access that bring up PS5 and Fifa, where as reports talking about the "TOP" mention Series X and bluey etc. So yes, there is a bigger list.

In the toy category, popular products included Fortnite and Roblox toys, Bluey toys, Funko Pop! figurines and Disney Encanto toys. Video game consoles have been hot, too, with the Microsoft Xbox Series X and Sony PlayStation 5 both popular purchases, along with games such as FIFA 23, NBA 2K23,

It's divided up into categories for the bigger lists but we can't access that full view (unless it's leaked) we only get the top 5. But you are seeing the same products come up, Macbooks, Bluey, Roblox(toys) and Series X. PS5 is a top seller but it's not in the top 5 but articles are mentioning gaming has it's own section. It's jsut that OVERALL for BF sales Series X was in the top 5.
 
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Are you sure these are actual sales??
Because certainly there was far more stock for Series S than Series X, also Series S was much more discounted so this seems off?
Maybe it's not actual rankings but hot items in general?

I don't really get why people are surprised the X selling at increasing discounts throughout the month may not have been the most in-demand product on BF when it was already on sale at BF levels for 25 days of Nov. We know Microsoft was saving stock of Series X for Black Friday, and day of was the only time most people were able to get the X at a discount or part of a promo.

Yes, it was easy to believe S would kick it, but people probably already brought the S already after a month of deals.

I am skeptical about it.
We should wait for NPD.
XSS shouldnt be able to lose to XSX.

NPD doesn't split XS consoles.
 
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feynoob

Banned
Are you sure these are actual sales??
Because certainly there was far more stock for Series S than Series X, also Series S was much more discounted so this seems off?
Maybe it's not actual rankings but hot items in general?
I am skeptical about it.
We should wait for NPD.
XSS shouldnt be able to lose to XSX.
 

Kilau

Member
I don't really get why people are surprised the X selling at increasing discounts throughout the month may not have been the most in-demand product on BF when it was already on sale at BF levels for 25 days of Nov. We know Microsoft was saving stock of Series X for Black Friday, and day of was the only time most people were able to get the X at a discount or part of a promo.

Yes, it was easy to believe S would kick it, but people probably already brought the S already after a month of deals.
My question, what were the XSX deals? I saw tons of deals for the XSS but other than the Instagram shopping deal I didn't see anything for XSX.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Those are the top 5 most popular products for each day. There are other reports that are able to have industry level access that bring up PS5 and Fifa, where as reports talking about the "TOP" mention Series X and bluey etc. So yes, there is a bigger list.
I couldn't find in the report where it says they were the 5 most popular products for each day. I only see where it says Hot Products of 2022.
 
My question, what were the XSX deals? I saw tons of deals for the XSS but other than the Instagram shopping deal I didn't see anything for XSX.

The deals were on BF. That's my point, people saw the powerful console on sale (or part of promos like gift cards etc) on Black Friday. All the S deals were BF level but were for the whole month up until BF. That' probably hurt it being a big product on the ACTUAL DAY of Black Friday imo.

I'm sure for the full month of Nov, XSS is way ahead. But it was probably already brought by anyone who wanted one before BF specifically.
 
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I couldn't find in the report where it says they were the 5 most popular products for each day. I only see where it says Hot Products of 2022.

Look at the articles reporting on it, some of them break down what's on the lists, like the one I just linked you. We (me and you) can't get the full list without access.

Another Example
Other popular items included drones, Xbox Series X, and games such as FIFA 23 and Pokémon Scarlet and Violet.

Like the other example I posted before, this article is mentioning games on the rest of the list. We can only see the top 5.

Notice Xbox Series X is always mentioned in each article. It's probably the most notable winner of Black Friday if not the most.
 
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Elios83

Member
I don't really get why people are surprised the X selling at increasing discounts throughout the month may not have been the most in-demand product on BF when it was already on sale at BF levels for 25 days of Nov. We know Microsoft was saving stock of Series X for Black Friday, and day of was the only time most people were able to get the X at a discount or part of a promo.

Yes, it was easy to believe S would kick it, but people probably already brought the S already after a month of deals.
I don't know it still doesn't make sense given the stock levels and prices.
Microsoft has fully focused on promoting Series S not the X.
Btw these are just Adobe Analitycs stats and it seems these are hot products in general. Both Series X and PS5 are mentioned.
Maybe next week we'll get some actual PR, NPD for the full month results.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Look at the articles reporting on it, some of them break down what's on the lists, like the one I just linked you. We (me and you) can't get the full list without access.
I see. The article you linked in the OP doesn't mention console sales at all. Are there other articles out there that confirm this? I can't find any.
 

Kilau

Member
The deals were on BF. That's my point, people saw the powerful console on sale (or part of promos like gift cards etc) on Black Friday. All the S deals were BF level but were for the whole month up until BF. That' probably hurt it being a big product on the ACTUAL DAY of Black Friday imo.

I'm sure for the full month of Nov, XSS is way ahead. But it was probably already brought by anyone who wanted one before BF specifically.
I'm not doubting ranking, I just didn't notice any specific deals for it on BF following all the usual deal channels.
 
I don't know it still doesn't make sense given the stock levels and prices.
Microsoft has fully focused on promoting Series S not the X.

For the month, but Microsoft had stock ready of the X for Black Friday, and they had already mentioned (Phil) in the past that they were preparing consoles for the holiday. XSS had a lot of stock and been on sell most of the month. If most of the NOV stock of the X was sold on BF this makes perfect sense.

I'm not doubting ranking, I just didn't notice any specific deals for it on BF following all the usual deal channels.

Most of the deals were retail (non-online) compared to what deals were online so that's probably the difference. For example, my local Best Buy had Series X for $399. $449 with a game. But that wasn't on their website.
 
Well damn, that's a great deal.

It makes sense to have these sales for a day for the X. As doing the month-long promo strategy the S had would likely shrink demand and devalue the console. With the higher demand for the X over the S people probably picked them up on sale at in-person retail.

As for the S, I'm going to assume that with the month-long promos they won't be able to raise the price for December, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a permanent price drop for it come January. They really did too much promos for it being honest.
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
Why? I’m not surprised at all. If they had the stock… and PS5 didn’t. Series X is an incredible machine, and Game Pass is pretty dang great.
Series X is my main machine and I love it

Just surprising because I have seen them sitting on shelves for the last several months
 

lh032

I cry about Xbox and hate PlayStation.
I thought Series X/S has alot of price cut recently? perhaps that helps alot.
 
GG.

Everyone won, lots more stock this year than ever before.
That was the narrative leading up to Black Friday and especially since GOWR, and Sony revealed that they held back stock of PS5's.

Having read no further than your post, I fully expect that narrative to change post haste.
 
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