Xbox Series X|S Reaches 2 Million Sales In UK, Climbs Into Top 10 Fastest-Selling List

@Wheatly We know there was severe supply constraints for the first year at least.

@Kezelpaso Yes lots of "Free" Xbox ones with premium phones laptops and tablets were on offer.

@tharsman What you have to remember is first year or two's sales of a new console are largely based on prior successes. Hence Xbox One sold well INITIALLY off the back of 360s success, despite Microsoft's best efforts to kill the brand with the TV, TV, TV + always online + no second hand sales conference. Besides as a launch lineup it was likely the best in Xbox history, certainly better than XSX, but it was later that everything dried up. EDIT: I see we were posting at the same time, similar thoughts.

@Tharsman We also aren't factoring in there are a lot of enthusiasts, myself included, that will buy most consoles Day 1 regardless... as long as it doesn't look awful and we haven't been burned recently. (I didn't actually buy a Switch Day 1 as I felt burned by the Wii U for example and played BotW on that system). They probably account for quite a lot of those 2 million.

@Wheatly There may have been increased demand due to the pandemic in the early days, but we'll never really know how much it was affected as the supply was so strongly constrained. But sales went up dramatically once supply picked up both on xbox but especially on PS5 which has been setting new records recently.

@UltimateOtaku91

I thought that. Especially as 140 weeks from the Switch release date is late 2019, probably near to the release of Luigis Mansion 3 and Sword and Shield.

@Tharsman

“ The Xbox one sold 2m faster than the 360? The Switch selling 2m slower than almost anything?”

That I think just shows the effect of momentum from previous gen, the 360 was huge over here. Whereas the Wii U was basically non-existent, possibly explaining the Switch starting slow.

“And let’s not forget picking Mega Drive over SNES back in the day!”

That was largely down to Nintendo. Whereas you guys in the US had a huge NES presence, Nintendo Power, hotlines, big ad campaigns etc the U.K. didn’t even have Nintendo. They farmed out their distribution to third-parties until the early 00’s. Games and systems were regularly very late if they released at all (Mario RPG never came out here).

Sega saw an opportunity because they were struggling in the US and Japan and threw a lot of resources at PAL territories. Megadrive launched in November 1990, the SNES not until April 1992 and then only with 4 games whereas the MD had a huge library by then and was firmly established as the ‘cool’ console.

@Tharsman you are right that some enthusiasts were more likely to be pissed at XBO announcement and some who were on the fence might not have jumped in.

But equally many would have been confident that, over the course of a generation, there would be enough good exclusives to justify both consoles hence a day 1 purchase.

I’ve said it before but XBO was one of only a few consoles I ALMOST regret owning in addition to other platforms as there were so few exclusives. It always comes back to the games.

@NorthwestEagle

Sorry for the late reply, don’t k ow how I missed this.

Yes it was Mattel and I don’t think they had a clue what they were doing, though I gather the eccentric and often very late selection of games that got sent over to Europe was down to NOJ. It then went to a long-defunct distribution company called THE who did a bit better with the SNES and N64 but still lagged way behind the competitions presence.

I totally agree that the Wii was where NOE got their act together. They were now much more in control. The system was almost simultaneously released, well priced and they did a really good job with the release schedules and unexpected translations. The result was a massive success. They’ve done a superb job with the Switch too, never seen Nintendo so aggressive over here. And again the results are there for all to see.