Xbox One outsells PS4 in November

As many predicted, possibly due to the seemingly high number of Xbox One bargains over the Black Friday period compared to PS4 ones.

Microsoft released the following statement, attributed to Xbox Marketing's Corporate Vice President, Mike Nichols.

We are committed to making Xbox the best place to play, with this year’s best games, the best community of gamers to play with, and terrific value. And we are amazed by the excitement Xbox fans have shown to start off this holiday. November set a new record for sales of Xbox One, and Xbox One was the best-selling console in the US and UK. Response to the holiday lineup of games on Xbox One was incredible, with Xbox One fans buying more games in November in the U.S. than any other gen eight platform and enjoying over 357 million hours of gameplay globally. In fact, more fans logged into Xbox Live across Xbox One and Xbox 360, and enjoyed more entertainment, than any other month in the history of Xbox. We love to see the excitement from our fans and are grateful for their passion, support and contributions to the Xbox community.

Some interesting tidbits from NPD include:

Overall retail sales across hardware, software, and accessories declined 11 percent this November versus November 2013. For the most part throughout 2014, we have seen software declines that were offset by year-over-year increases in hardware spending. This November, however, hardware declines totaled $294 million while software declined $17 million or 2 percent. Accessory sales increased by a modest $5 million.

Currently, year-to-date sales across hardware, software, and accessories through November 2014 are up 2%.

Hardware bundles were a major factor in the sales of hardware this November, with a number of new bundles ranking as the highest selling hardware bundles so far this year with one bundle ranking as the highest selling hardware bundle ever based on dollar sales.

Cumulative PS4 and Xbox One sales are now almost 80 percent higher than the combined total of PS3 and Xbox 360 sales after 13 months on the market.

Software declines stemmed from losses from consoles software as portable software and PC Games software increased over November 2013. Portable software increased by 25 percent due to the combined performance Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Super Smash Bros. for the 3DS. PC game sales increased by 34 percent over November 2013 due to The Sims 4 and the launch of World of Warcraft expansion, Warlords Of Draenor.

Seventh generation console sales combined to decrease by 49 percent or $361 million from November 2013. Eighth generation console software sales and portable software sales increased by $342 million and could not offset the losses stemming from seventh generation console.

Interestingly, this month had three platform exclusives within the top ten games with Pokemon Alpha Sapphire, Pokemon Omega Ruby, and Halo: The Master Chief Collection while in November 2013 there were no platform exclusives ranked in the top ten games.

Only bought one myself cause of the deals

Hopefully Microsoft can capitalize on this and close the sales gap with the PS4 as a close console race will only bring more deals and get both Microsoft and Sony working hard to increase the value of each machine