Xbox 360 romps home in Black Friday console battle

Over in the good ol' US of A, the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – kicked off by Black Friday – is one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year.

So you can just picture the smug grin plastered all over the mugs of Microsoft's head honchos today as sales figures for the Black Friday weekend show that the Xbox 360 outsold its rival Sony PlayStation 3 console by as much as three to one.

Xboxing clever

According to a Microsoft boast – sorry, press release – today, US retailers also reported that as well as comprehensively outgunning the PS3, the Xbox 360 actually scored sales figures up 25 per cent on those recorded over the same holiday weekend in 2007.

This all seems to provide further justification of Microsoft's decision to slash the price of its Xbox 360 console in September – a decision that's also seen its sales in Europe increase by up to 400 per cent in some quarters.

Somehow we doubt that even Sony will be able to massage these sort of numbers into a positive spin for the PS3. But we'll still be disappointed if they don't at least try...