Black Friday 2021 is now behind us, and there are now new consoles stashed away in closets all around the world, but what will people be playing coming Christmas morning? Which console “won” Black Friday? Was it the perennially popular Nintendo Switch? Or perhaps the red-hot PlayStation 5? Nope! According to analysts, it was the humble Xbox Series S that came out on top this holiday shopping season.
This revelation comes courtesy of the Adobe Digital Economy Index (reported by Business Insider), who analyzed a whopping 1 trillion visits to retail sites and directly surveyed over 1000 retailers. Now, take this with a small grain of salt – while Adobe was obviously working with a lot of data, they didn’t have actual sales numbers (the one place we do have hard sales, the UK, was won by the Nintendo Switch). That said, we can pretty safely say it’s going to be a happy holiday season for the Xbox Series S, even if it doesn’t come in at #1 in every region.
The Xbox Series S potentially beating more-hyped hardware like the PS5 and Switch may seem surprising at first blush, but it makes a certain amount of sense. First and foremost, the Xbox Series S was actually on shelves (both physical and digital) this Black Friday, while the PS5 and Xbox Series X largely weren’t. Microsoft also ended up delivering this year’s strongest holiday lineup, with both Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5 generating a lot of excitement. If you want to jump into the latest Xbox exclusives without the compromises that would come with playing on an Xbox One, the Xbox Series S was the only real "next-gen" option for many this year. And hey, the system's reasonable $300 price tag probably didn’t hurt as inflation pummels people’s finances.
Any of you folks grab a new console this Black Friday? What system will be under your tree?
