315,000 Game Consoles Were Sold in The UK During Black Friday

The UK’s Black Friday shopping spree resulted in a number of fairly decent promotions with the current generation consoles being a popular choice for Christmas presents. According to veteran games industry website MCV, retailers revealed a total of 315,000 units were sold during the Black Friday period. Please note, the term Black Friday doesn’t actually refer to one date, and sales began way in advance. Nevertheless, this is a very impressive number and showcases the popularity of console gaming in 2015. Additionally, the PlayStation 4 was the best-selling console during Black Friday with approximately 139,000 units sold while the Xbox One shifted almost 134,000 units. This is a pretty good result for Microsoft considering their terrible Xbox One reveal and large number of customers defecting to Sony.

On the other hand, the Xbox One was discounted by a fairly decent margin with some excellent bundle deals. For example, one particular bundle includes a 500GB console, Ori and the Blind Forest’ & ‘Rare Replay’ downloads for £229.99. This is still cheaper than a basic PS4 console on its own. Clearly, Microsoft needs to try to shift units through cheaper deals, while the PlayStation 4 doesn’t really need help to report good sales figures. Overall, there was a huge increase in console sales compared to last year’s Black Friday event. MCV reported:

“PS4 sales are up 28.6 per cent over last year’s Black Friday, while Xbox One sales are up 23.3 per cent.”

Personally, I was very disappointed with the Black Friday sale and retailers didn’t really offer anything spectacular. Strangely enough, the best deals came from Amazon France, and Amazon Germany. Importing a console from these regions while exploiting the current currency conversion allowed for some breathtaking deals! Also, due to EU law, there’s no import duty, for anything sold throughout EU territories.