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Microsoft shares numbers from a record Black Friday week for gaming

Microsoft shares numbers from a record Black Friday week for gaming

When Microsoft unveiled Windows 10 to the world last year one area they said would get a renewed focus would be gaming on the PC.

It was around that same time that we first saw the concept of streaming from the Xbox One console that allows you to play Xbox One console games on your Windows 10 devices.

That feature has been very popular and my own personal experience using it on my home network has been spectacular with no lag or any other delay issues.

With the Xbox One's recent update to a core OS based on Windows 10, that connection between console and gaming on the PC is even tighter and Microsoft really focused on that during this years Black Friday week.

Xbox Live's Larry Hryb, aka Major Nelson, shared several details on his blog overnight to highlight the amount of activity those platforms saw during the Black Friday period and the weeks leading up to it.

Included among those stats are:

  • 325 million hours spent gaming worldwide on Xbox Live. That is an increase of almost 200% compared to the same period in 2014.
  • Xbox apps usage increased 321%
  • Xbox One and Xbox 360 sales were up by 57% and Xbox Live subscriptions increased over 40%
  • Retail sales of the Xbox One console saw a 22% increase over the previous year. That is big enough to become the second best Black Friday week in 15 years of selling Xbox consoles.
  • Unique users in the Xbox Store were up by 55% across both consoles. Those users on Xbox One consoles grew by 88%
  • More than 4 million hours were spent playing Xbox 360 games using Backwards Compatibility since it launched on 12 November.

Over on Windows 10 there were similar increases:

  • The number of hours games were played on Windows 10 in November exceeded Windows 8's highest ever total.
  • More than 5 million hours of games have been streamed to Windows 10 devices from Xbox One consoles. The most streamed game in November was Fallout 4 which was released on 10 November.
  • In November 30% of games played on Steam were played on Windows 10. That is 6 times the number of Steam gamers on OSX and Linux together.

The last official count of devices running Windows 10 was provided in early October and stood at 110 million Windows 10 installs. Recent speculation puts that count at approximately 148 million with Windows 10 finally passing the Windows XP install base.

When you consider that Windows XP was considered the best gaming version of Windows ever those new numbers for Windows 10 PC gaming on Steam and the streaming from Xbox One consoles has now positioned Windows 10 to take over the gaming throne for Windows.

What has your gaming experience been like on Windows 10?

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