There's been an unfortunate narrative doing the rounds on social media this weekend about Xbox consoles, and it's all to do with some new Black Friday 2025 data that suggests the Series X and Series S sold poorly during BF week.
Specifically, Mat Piscatella of the analysis group "Circana" took to Bluesky on Sunday to share how the PlayStation 5 dominated Black Friday week with 47% of gaming hardware sales in the US, followed by the Switch 2 at 24% and the little-known NEX Playground at 14%. The other 15% will have been shared by the Xbox Series X, Series S, Switch 1 and whatever else falls into the hardware category (not specified).
To be honest, we had to look up the NEX Playground to figure out what it was — apparently it's a Kinect-like system for "kids and families" that's got amazing reviews and only costs $249 USD. The things you learn!
As you can see, it wasn't great in the UK either. The Game Business reported that Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S only accounted for 10% of the market during Black Friday week, with the PS5 racking up a whopping 62%.
Before we get all doom and gloom though, this is exactly what was to be expected. Xbox basically had no Black Friday deals for the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S apart from some extremely slight reductions at a handful of retailers (mostly in the UK), whereas the PS5 received massive reductions and therefore ended up selling predictably well.
Industry experts have warned that the BF sales data doesn't tell us much about "consumer demand" for Xbox:
Nevertheless, the fact that Xbox Series X|S apparently lost to the NEX Playground in the US not only makes for an interesting angle, but adds fuel to the narrative that nobody's buying Xbox consoles anymore. There is a good reason behind it in this case, but that part's inevitably getting overlooked by many fans of the industry.
Should Xbox have made a bigger effort to sell Series X and S consoles during Black Friday this year? Maybe that's a lesson to learn for next time, but we have a feeling Microsoft's more focused on the future of its hardware, services and software rather than continuing to push the Series X and S right now.