According to a recent report by Business Insider, the Xbox Series S was the best-selling console of this year’s Black Friday sale. In fact, Adobe reports that the Xbox Series S was the best-selling device among the “one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites” on Black Friday.
Part of the device’s appeal is its reasonable price tag. The Xbox Series S only costs $300, which is $100-$200 less than most PlayStation 5 consoles.
The Xbox Series S has even outperformed the Series X console thanks, in part to its price tag. The Xbox Series X reportedly cost $500 on Black Friday.
The Profit‘s Take:
Perfect Price Discrimination in action (Microsoft offered people two price points while PlayStation could only offer one). We can conclude, in some ways, that consoles are moving further down the market. Cost is the biggest concern as opposed to features or technology. I think Sony missed an opportunity to release a “PS5 Lite” that was a more cost-efficient, stripped-down version of the original product. It feels like they fundamentally don’t understand their audience. I have a theory on console gamers: I would bet 80% of them can’t tell the difference between 45 fps and 60 fps. Now, I don’t have any data to back this up, but I really feel like they could have had a lot of success releasing a simpler, cheaper version of the PS5. Microsoft looks very smart. There are all kinds of good reasons to do sales this way.
(All information was provided by Business Insider and Essentially Sports)
I can only speak for myself as I bought the Series S because it was the only unit available to play Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Campaign. I would have rather purchased a Series X but no luck finding one all year. Microsoft is losing sales of their Series X as I won’t be buying both the S and X. The data would be more conclusive if all three units (PS5, Series X, and Series S) were readily available. But they weren’t for me.