Xbox One wins the Xmas shopping season; Nintendo Switch wins the year

Video game consoles top many holiday wish lists, and new data from Slice Intelligence indicates that Santa’s sleigh will be carrying three times as many video game consoles as last year.  The Xbox One is the most popular, commanding 43 percent of all consoles sold in November, but the Nintendo Switch is winning the year. Among those who purchased a gaming system in 2017, 44 percent bought a Switch. In terms of volume,  Nintendo sold nearly twice as many units as Xbox and Playstation. So while there may be more Xboxes under the tree, there look to be more Switches in homes.

Amazon, as usual, holds the top spot in terms of market share by selling 29 percent of all video game consoles sold online, but the picture plays out differently when we look at which consoles are selling at each retailer. Walmart is the top seller of the Playstation 4--35 percent of Playstation 4’s were bought at Walmart after the retailer offered the PS4 for $50 less than its competitors. Nintendo Switch shoppers were most likely to close the deal at Best Buy, which took 29 percent of the Nintendo Switch sales online. Target and Gamestop round out the list of top five sellers for all consoles, with 15 and 7 percent share of console sales, respectively.

The strong growth we reported for Black Friday and Cyber Monday continues to build momentum. Online shopping revenue for the period between November 1 and December 1 grew by 26 percent year on year, fueled by 18 percent more shoppers, who spent an average of $393.61, seven percent more than the same period last year. A big chunk of that money, 34 percent, is being spent with Amazon, followed by Best Buy, Target, and Walmart.

While it is impressive that Amazon continues to grow faster than the overall market, we continue to see traditional brick and mortar retailers making big strides toward gaining online share. With sales up 62 percent from this same period (November 1 - December 1) last year, Costco’s holiday promotions are ringing up sales in bulk. Target’s sales are up 47 percent, with Kohl’s following closely at 44 percent growth.

With a panel of 5 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world. Slice Intelligence is the exclusive e-commerce data provider for the NPD’s Checkout Tracking e-commerce service.