UPDATE - Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg tells Next-Gen that top retailers had reported Xbox 360 hardware outages during Black Friday week, as the new Arcade package performs above expectations.
Microsoft announced Thursday that Xbox 360 sold 310,000 units for the week of November 18 in the US. This compares favorably to the year-younger Nintendo Wii, which sold 350,000 units during the same time frame.
It’s highly likely that the gap could’ve been wider if Nintendo was able to keep up with the Wii’s runaway demand.
Regardless, Xbox 360 had an impressive week. Greenberg told Next-Gen that Microsoft’s top retailers sold out of hardware coming out of the busy Thanksgiving shopping week.
“We turned around and replenished those units,” the Xbox 360 product manager said in a phone interview. “We’re seeing thousands and thousands of top big box retail stores reporting outages depending on SKUs, and some reporting outages of the whole Xbox 360 line.”
Microsoft said that it outsold Sony's PlayStation 3 2 to 1 last week, according to retail estimates.
Greenberg also said that the newly-introduced entry-level Xbox 360 Arcade package ($280) is performing considerably better than expected.
“We heard from one of our top retailers that the launch of Arcade was the biggest Xbox 360 sales week since Christmas of last year. It’s performed above what we’ve expected and is a bigger percentage of the mix than what we thought it would be.”
He added that the sales show that Xbox 360 is beginning to get a better foothold with the mass market. “Games like Guitar Hero and Scene It and more of the family-style games that are available are doing very well. We’re hearing that Scene It was a huge hit and sold out pretty much across the board.
“We knew Halo 3 would be a big hit, but we didn’t know that Arcade, Scene It and Guitar Hero would be things that families would be buying this holiday. Hopefully that trend will continue.”
Software sales continue to outpace those of Wii and PS3, with Xbox 360 capturing 54 percent of total software sales at $162 million during October, according to NPD. Wii and PS3 captured 30 percent and 16 percent, respectively.
[UPDATE] It seems that SCEA is disputing Microsoft's 2:1 Xbox 360 to PS3 ratio. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter Todd Bishop received the following e-mail from Sony rep Kimberly Otzman, who said: "It's (Sony Computer Entertainment America) policy not to disclose our unit sales numbers until NPD numbers are officially released which will be December 13th. However, I can assure you that Microsoft's estimates of our PS3 unit sales numbers are way off and they did not outsell PS3 2:1 during Black Friday week."
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It’s highly likely that the gap could’ve been wider if Nintendo was able to keep up with the Wii’s runaway demand.
