So, yeah, Black Friday week is extremely promotional for video games. Stuff that does not price promote (generally speaking, here) does not see much of a seasonal lift at all from the prior week (usually none). BF Week performance can correlate closely to what's being promoted and by how much.

But nothing with Xbox Series lol

Brief sales history of Nex Playground. Started at just a 5,000 initial run in 2023 to a nationwide push in 2024 to now selling over 500,000 life to date as of November 2025 www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threa...

(This is for week ending Nov 29, 2025, btw)

In the US, PlayStation 5 accounted for 47% of total Black Friday week hardware unit sales, leading the market. Nintendo Switch 2 ranked 2nd (24%), with the NEX Playground 3rd (14%). Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

In August they said they were at 250k If you look up the Nex on Amazon, they say 100k units were purchased in the last month

Back in March I was sent a press release about the Nex, stating that “In just its first holiday season last year, Nex Playground sold nearly 150,000 units, completely selling out on Black Friday at Amazon, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy” I failed to investigate further

US best-selling hardware SKUs for week ending Nov 22, 2025, ranked on units sold: 1) NS2 Mario Kart World Bundle 2) NEX Playground Interactive Gaming System 3) PS5 Slim Digital 1 TB So that's neat. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

Played my first ever match on Pokemon Showdown (Gen 9 random battle) Never played comp before and haven't touch Gen 9 at all yet, but I did good I think. replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9randomba...

I wish Xbox would come out with an Elite 3 controller with Hall Effect. Was looking to buy a new controller as the old one was having issues and the Game Sir would be cool but I don't like the design. Would rather have an official looking controller that had Hall Effect Went with the Pulse Cipher

"As they prepare to cook and serve meals at their home or at another person’s home, consumers are stretching their budgets. In general, shoppers remain wary on the spending front, facing 30%+ higher food and beverage prices compared to 2019 and without a similar hike in wages."

In Monrovia, California, protesters are purchasing 17¢ ICE scrapers from Home Depot and immediately returning them to create long lines and slow down the entire store. Their aim is to disrupt sales and convey a message opposing ICE raids occurring in their neighborhood.

Happy 20th to the Xbox 360! The Xbox 360 sold 42.7M consoles in the US lifetime, with Call of Duty: Black Ops II being its best-selling game in the US in both units and dollars. The 360 Headset led accessory SKUs in US units sold at over 11.4M. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

PC was the lead platform.

Yep. Granted, I have never followed the franchise closely, but Digimon Story: Time Stranger has generated the most dollar sales in the US of any title in franchise history, according to Circana's Retail Tracking Service.

Hardware - October spending on ASUS PC Portable hardware devices increased by 4.8x compared to a year ago and is now 30% higher year-to-date.

Hardware - Nintendo Switch 2 sold 328k units in October. It is 68% ahead of the sales pace set by the original Nintendo Switch and is 3% ahead of PlayStation 4’s previous record velocity.

Hardware - Video game hardware spending in October grew 36% when compared a year ago, to $351M. Switch 2 was again able to offset declines across Switch (-52% versus a year ago), Xbox Series (-37%) and PlayStation 5 (-22%).

Friendly reminder that October 2025 US video game market results from Circana will be released tomorrow at 9am Eastern. Should be a fun one.

Steam Machine looks so clean

Happy 5th Anniversary to PlayStation 5! PS5 is the 2nd fastest selling PlayStation device in US history (trailing only PS2) with 26.7M units sold through Oct 4th, 2025. And here are the top 10 best-selling PS5 games ($), led by Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

Since the Democrats worked extra hard to hide who actually supported this, I think the No Kings/Resistance position should be to primary every Democrat unless they publicly call for Schumer's ouster this week Either they go into total rebellion mode, which they won't, or the people will

Bunch of coward fucks if this is true, you don't belong in politics. The most corrupt, fascist admin in US history that the public hates and you side with the enemy to save their morale???

Did it www.installbaseforum.com/forums/threa...

Been collecting PSP and Vita sales stats and oh boy, figuring out Vita LTD is a chore The earliest stats we have for it stumped me for awhile on how they fit with later info but turns out people back then didn't understand much either Probably will make a thread on IB about it.

Friendly reminder that a game meeting or beating expectations does not necessarily mean it sold better or worse than other games. Internal financial expectations and comparative performance between titles are different things.

Video I made back in February about GTA VI's possible impact on console sales www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQOj...

BTW you will not see GTA VI boost console sales a year before PS6 and Xbox PC comes out. November 2026 is so late in the cycle basically everyone has already bought the console that will have bought it.

The second delay has hit

If there's anything to be learned tonight, it's that there better be Dems with a spine ready to win in 2026. Just an absolute blue sweep across every major election tonight. Fuck Trump and all that are currently ruining this country, get out of here.

Steam isn't a monopoly just because EGS, EA Origin, Windows Store, Battle net, Uplay, etc all failed to offer compelling platforms for PC users. Go build your game in Roblox, over 20M people could play your game at once

Market share isn't what defines a monopoly, folks. A monopoly is where there's a single seller for a particular service or good with no substitutes and the ability to charge excessively high rates because of this. Anyone can launch a PC distribution service, and there have been A LOT of them.

In other words, 72% don't know what a monopoly is.

The Mario Kart World Switch 2 Bundle is at 8.10M, with total MKW shipments at 9.57M, meaning individual game shipments are 1.47M. 8.10M Bundled Switch 2's 2.26M Base Switch 2's MKW standalone attach rate to Base Switch 2 is 65% Very strong outside the bundle!

Switch 2 shipped an outstanding 4.54M units in the last quarter, life to date shipments at 10.36M 4.54M in the second quarter is unmatched by any other console. Nintendo expects to ship a total of 19M Switch 2's by March 2026

80(!) people bought a Ms. Pac Man Arcade 1UP machine at Target in the past month. Sales this close to 0 you got to interview these people or something. Who are you, how many more of these machines do you already have or plan to purchase

Sega officially reveals sales numbers for recent titles (previously leaked) Persona 5 + Royal: 13M Persona 5 Royal: 7.25M Sonic Frontiers: 4.57M Yakuza: Like a Dragon: 2.86M Sonic Superstars: 2.43M Persona 3 Reload: 2.07M Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth: 1.66M www.segasammy.co.jp/cms/wp-conte...

Xbox Financial Results FY26 Q1 Total: $5,508,000,000 [-2%] Content & Services: ~$5,126,000,000 [+1%] (estimated) Hardware: ~$382,000,000 [-29%] (estimated) Xbox shipments: <800K (estimated)

Animal Crossing New Horizons? Recession indicator

What a massive disappointment on the campaign. Multiplayer I messed with Warzone heavy, I really did want a Warzone 2 with major enhancements for Halo Infinite.

He's still bragging about remembering the damn animals 🤣 I remember the first time he spoke about the dementia test and I lost it when he brought up the animals like it was a big accomplishment

Pokémon Legends: Z-A had a massive US launch at retail. Launch week physical unit and dollar sales of Pokémon Legends: Z-A were the biggest for a new physical video game launch since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom back in May of 2023. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

Oh, it's PS2 North America's launch anniversary

Happy 25th, PS2! The PS2 sold over 46.5M units in the US, with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas its best-selling game in both units and dollars. Over 147M accessory units sold for PS2, with the PS2 8 Meg Memory Card moving 28.3M units with a 61% attach rate. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

The kind of thing that happens when you need to get to 30%...

Never, ever let facts get in the way of believing what you wish were true.

Phil Spencer says Xbox playtime in Japan increased by around 20% in the past year across console, PC and cloud. "I had to point out one thing, it seems to me that the importance of PC is increasingly growing for our Japanese players." automaton-media.com/en/news/xbox...

Incredible result for both the game and the Switch 2 version. It's nearly half the sales so that would be ~3.0M Switch 1 ~2.8M Switch 2 That should mean ~1 in 3 Switch 2 owners bought Pokemon.

Here's a fun one I missed yesterday: During September, MLB The Show 25 surpassed MLB The Show 23 to become the 2nd best-selling game in franchise (and the baseball sim genre) history in the US. It trails (and is unlikely to catch) only MLB The Show 21. Source: Circana Retail Tracking Service

Pursuing a consistent 30 OI target in gaming sure would explain... all of it. Back in the day we had a 15 OI target on every new game P&L and even that proved exceptionally challenging. Man.