It may be almost seven years old, but Microsoft’s Xbox 360 shows no sign of being ready for the scrap heap. With plenty of huge titles released recently like Halo 4 and Black Ops II, the console is still going strong. So strongly, in fact, that it seems we just can’t get enough of Microsoft’s PlayStation competitor.
Microsoft’s Xbox mouthpiece Major Nelson (or Larry to his friends) announced today via a blog post that the Xbox 360 has seen an extremely successful Black Friday this year, with sales of hardware and the Xbox LIVE service outpacing internal projections.
According to the stats, Microsoft sold 750,000 Xbox 360s in the United States alone during Black Friday, which is more than the company was projecting internally. Microsoft are not saying what those projections were for obvious reasons, but the fact they were on the low side is always an encouraging thing.
Xbox LIVE was also a huge hit, with subscriptions to the service up 50% on the previous year. This meant that Microsoft logged around 14 million users onto Xbox LIVE’s worldwide service at one point during the Black Friday period. That equates to 72 million hours of signed-in time. That’s a lot of online gaming!
It’s not just games that caused people to flock to the Xbox 360 either. Microsoft reports that use of U.S. entertainment applications was up 43% on last year, suggesting that streaming live and on-demand video and music content is something that many Xbox 360 owners are now taking advantage of. With more and more media partners coming online all the time, this section of Microsoft’s business will only continue to grow.
Speculation has been rife of late as to when Microsoft will introduce its next game console. With the news that buyers seemingly don’t regard the Xbox 360 as too long in the tooth as things are, will MS really need to change things any time soon? Movement at Sony may dictate such a thing, and the Japanese will likely want to replace the PS3 quicker than MS wants to replace its Xbox, after all.
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