Xbox 360 smashes console sales records

The Gadget Show  Wednesday 30 November 2011

This time of year is the season to be jolly, they say, and that’s especially true for the gaming industry, with sales of both consoles and games always going through the roof in the run-up to Christmas.

But the Xbox 360 in particular has been enjoying some festive cheer – in fact the Microsoft console has just recorded its strongest sales week in history, with an incredible 960,000 units shifted in the US over the past seven days.

That’s almost entirely thanks to Black Friday, the US shopping institution timed to hit the sweet spot of consumers’ pre-Christmas spending splurge. Thanks to some tasty discounts an incredible 800,000 Xbox 360s were reportedly snapped up in just 24 hours.

The Kinect add-on also saw plenty of retail love, with sales of 750,000 over the week clearly pointing to some attractive bundle deals across the Atlantic.

While Black Friday is mainly a US tradition, we’ve started seeing similar deals popping up here in the UK too, specifically on the Monday following Black Friday, which has been christened Cyber Monday as it typically sees more cash splashed online than on any other day of the year.

As for the Xbox 360, its record-breaking sales week is all the more impressive when you consider it’s been around for six years now – an age in the world of gadgets – and rumours of the next-generation Xbox 720 continue to gather pace.