Microsoft talks on Thanksgiving hardware numbers

It’s been a busy week this Thanksgiving for Microsoft, who reports that  it had to replenish supplies to top retailers who had sold out of Xbox 360s for the shopping week. Microsoft also reports that a big percentage of sales are made up of the successful Xbox 360 Arcade unit, which “performed above what [Microsoft] expected.” More in the full article.

It’s been a busy week this Thanksgiving for Microsoft, who reports that it had to replenish supplies to top retailers who had sold out of Xbox 360s for the shopping week. Microsoft ended with total sales of 310,000 units for the week, 40,000 units shy of the Nintendo Wii’s own numbers, a gap that could have been wider if not for the Wii shortage.

Microsoft also reports that a big percentage of sales are made up of the successful Xbox 360 Arcade unit, which “performed above what [Microsoft] expected.” Aaron Greenberg of Microsoft attributes a large percentage of units to the Arcade console.

Greenberg adds that the Xbox 360 is getting a better grip on the mass market, saying that their more family-oriented games like Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, PC) and Scene It are “a huge hit. […] Hopefully that trend will continue.” Jeff Bell of Microsoft also recently commented that the 360 is actively competing with the Wii in the casual gaming market.

Microsoft also commented that it outsold the PS3 2 to 1 for retail estimates during that week. Sony dispute this saying that while they won’t release their official numbers until the NPD group does (on December 13), they do comment 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.”

If the Thanksgiving week was this busy, it’ll be interesting to see what the Christmas season would bring.

Via Next Generation