InfoScout, America’s richest source of consumer purchase insights, looked at over 1.2m transcribed brick-and-mortar and online receipts on Black Friday weekend to analyze this year’s winners and losers among gaming consoles.
Looking to maximize what’s remaining from the existing generation of consoles, both Microsoft and Sony released minor upgrades leading up to Black Friday. Xbox trimmed down the device itself while adding support for HDR gaming and Ultra HD Blu-ray players, coining their new console the Xbox One S. PlayStation followed suit on aesthetics, offering the PlayStation 4 Slim with a sleeker design. Sony also looked to capitalize on the 4k TV trend with the November release of the PlayStation 4 Pro, offering increased hardware performance and support for 4k streaming.
Driven primarily by a discount at Target for the PlayStation 4 Uncharted Bundle ($212), Sony won the war of the shelves for 2016 Black Friday Weekend.
High res: https://ideagrove.egnyte.com/dl/PbRYi55BlU ;
But when it came to online shopping, the storyline was different. The appetite grew beyond the base 500GB models with the Xbox 1TB Battlefield Bundle, which was offered for $299 at most major e-tailers, down from a regular price of $349, showing serious interest relative to the $399 Playstation Pro 1TB.
High res: https://ideagrove.egnyte.com/dl/rdRfZv347v
Did the push by both Sony and Microsoft to slim down and enhance the aesthetic appeal have an influence? According to our survey to over 300 console purchasers on Black Friday, not so much. Less than 8% of respondents cited exterior console design as an influencing factor for their purchase.
While PlayStation4 purchasers had few console+game bundles to choose from, namely only PS4 with Uncharted 4, Xbox had a wider variety (Battlefield, Gears of War, Minecraft), which was a significant factor when it came to console buying decisions.
High res: https://ideagrove.egnyte.com/dl/rAVHn6C0Io
Stay tuned for our breakdown of the top games from Black Friday 2016.
About the Data
The data in this article was sourced from over 1.2m transcribed brick-and-mortar and online receipts on Black Friday weekend from Thursday evening to Sunday night. This included over 1,500 gaming console purchases at major brick-and-mortar retailers and major online E-tailers.
Throughout the 2016 holiday shopping season, InfoScout’s team of researchers will be analyzing real-time data from millions of omnichannel shopping trips. This data is mapped to shopper profile data, instantly triggered surveys and more to provide the richest set of shopper insights available.
