Nintendo’s Switch is a veritable sensation on the market, having sold almost 8 million units in just six months, and having topped charts in Japan and North America, and a lot of countries in Europe, for most of the time since it has been out. It was always expected to do well in the US on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day in the country every year, in spite of it having no deals and discounts, and being supply constrained.

And apparently, it did do well- according to a report by Adobe Insights, which gathers data from online portals via the Adobe Cloud- to be specific, from 4,500 retail websites, 55 million SKUs, and more than one trillion visits- the Nintendo Switch was the top selling item– not the top selling console, the top selling anything– online on Black Friday. Which is… insane.

Of course, chances are, that with retail sales, the Switch was probably edged out by the Xbox One and PS4, which both were cheaper and had more stock- that only makes sense. But it is now becoming evident that the month of November was the first month in a very long time that Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, all three ended up doing exceptionally well on the market.

Microsoft should be joining in on the Black Friday deals in good time but until then, the company has announced that new subscribers can purchase Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass each for $1. Head here for Xbox Live Gold and here for Xbox Game Pass.

The available subscriptions are for one month each. Again, this only applies to new subscribers. Existing subscribers can not renew their subscriptions at this price. Hurry quickly because the deal is only live for eight days more.

Those who never tried Xbox Game Pass before will benefit greatly. The service offers over 100 games that can be played as much as you’d like for one month. This includes Halo 5: Guardians, Fable 3, BioShock Infinite, Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain (which is only available till January 2018 so get it while it’s hot) and much more. The regular price for Xbox Game Pass is $10 per month otherwise.

While we will have to wait for the NPD numbers to report what system ultimately ended up dominating in the all important holiday shopping month of November, we are already starting to get preliminary reports about Black Friday specifically, commonly referred to as the largest day for shopping in the year.

This newest report by InfoScout (which was provided to GamingBolt), America’s leading source of analysis on consumer behavior, states that the PS4 won handily at retail this Black Friday, while Xbox One took the crown as far as online sales go. Sony’s victory, according to the report, comes at the hands of the excellent Uncharted 4 PS4 bundle, which was available for as little as $212.

In terms of online shopping, Xbox One’s $299 1TB consoles, bundled with a popular game such as Battlefield 1, ensured that the console would pull ahead there. Amusingly enough, however, it also seems like the Xbox One S’ aesthetic advantage over the PS4 Slim and the PS4 Pro didn’t matter much at all- less than 8% of the total respondents cited the consoles’ exterior designs as being a factor guiding their purchases.

You can check out the graphs showcasing some of this data below. Meanwhile, we await the NPD report for the month of November to find out what reigned and what did not in this all important month.

Though Sony won the Black Friday battle in the UK with sales significantly higher than the Xbox One, Microsoft fired back in the United States. According to a report released by Adobe, which pooled anonymous data from 22.6 billion visits to retail sites and monitoring 80 percent of all online transactions from 100 US retailers, Xbox console were among the top five best-selling electronics products for Black Friday.

Other devices included iPads, Samsung 4K TVs, the Macbook Air and LG TVs with Xbox consoles coming in fifth. Keep in mind that this is for online sales only. Total online sales for Black Friday (including Thanksgiving evening) were $5.27, up 17.7 percent year-on-year with a total of $1.93 billion spent on Thanksgiving and $3.34 billion spent on Black Friday.

When you look at the entire season though, from November 1st to 24th, the PS4 is still the best-selling console with Xbox One in second place. Pokemon Sun/Moon were the top-selling games followed by Call of Duty (perhaps Infinite Warfare, perhaps Modern Warfare Remastered or perhaps both).

Black Friday this year turned out to be a very successful endeavour for both Microsoft and Sony. While the former reported a 22 percent increase in sales over the same period last year, the latter has revealed 2015’s Black Friday to be its most successful ever.

Speaking to the Financial Times (courtesy of Financial Review), global chief executive Andrew House stated that,“We’ve just seen the most successful Black Friday in the company’s history.

“We are now trying to benchmark against the success of the PlayStation 2 – or exceed it if possible.”

House was “hesitant to predict” whether the PS4 could eventually outsell the PS2 though since “the cadence at which people expect innovation” was quicker. Nonetheless, with 30 million units sold worldwide since its launch in November 2013, there’s no denying that the PlayStation 4 is one of the fastest selling consoles of all time.

What are your thoughts on the success of the PS4? Let us know in the comments.

Whereas reports on which console did best during Black Friday seem to be wildly differing, it’s not impossible to believe that all three consoles probably did well over the holiday shopping season. And Microsoft, for their part, certainly seem to be happy with how the Xbox One seems to have done.

Speaking to DualShockers, Marketing Group General Manager Aaron Greenberg said, “We’re here on Monday after Black Friday, and we’ve definitely been talking with our retail partners, and overall we’ve seen unprecedented demand and engagement online over the Black Friday weekend.”

At this point, our first day back in the office, we don’t have any specific results, but I’d say we’ve been sort of watching the fans’ reaction and lots of people sending us updates on what was sold out, and what retail stores, and which online sites, and so on.

Black Friday also really got extended beyond the U.S. We saw Black Friday take off in the UK with a lot of great offers, and a lot of our retail partners had some just fantastic deals for people that were looking to pick up an Xbox One, and hopefully with the games that we’ve launched this holiday, people felt like we were delivering great value.”

With the NPD results for the month of November being posted next week, on December 10, we will soon know for sure exactly who did how well- but on the whole, I think the best possible result for all of us would be each console doing well for itself in the end.

Gfk Chart-Track’s video game sales chart for the UK is a little late this week but it reflects unit sales for Black Friday. In fact, this year’s Black Friday saw a 60 percent increase in overall unit sales with the PS4 and Xbox One making up 86 percent of total sales.

In terms of which games were on top, it was EA Sports’ FIFA 16 which took first place. Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 was in second place with a 47 percent increase in sales followed by Star Wars Battlefront, Fallout 4 (whose sales increased by 8 percent last week) and Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection.

Grand Theft Auto 5 continues its long stay in the sales charts at sixth place followed by Minecraft: Story Mode, Halo 5: Guardians, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Forza Motorsport 6. It should be interesting to note the places that Just Cause 3 and Rainbow Six: Siege will occupy given their recent releases. Stay

Black Friday is a great time for all gaming companies in general, because they end up seeing higher than usual sales for their products. However, Nintendo’s had it rough these past few years, what with the Wii U simply not managing to move a whole lot of units- including at Black Friday.

Ironically enough, with Wii U support tapering off, and its successor console looming on the horizon, that may have changed this year. Target reports that it had its biggest Black Friday yet, as far as its online sales go- and that this was driven primarily by three products: the Apple Watch, the iPad, and surprisingly enough, Nintendo’s Wii U.

Of course, the Wii U had its best bundle ever this year, with $250 getting you a new console, as well as Super Smash Bros. and Splatoon included for free- which meant you could get the console and two of its best games for a very low price. That may have been responsible in driving sales for the system.

It’s good to know, however, that there is demand for the Wii U- all it needed was for Nintendo to drop the price. If only they had done this two years ago, maybe the console’s outlook would have been very different.

The PS4 really hit a home run this Black Friday, which is something we should have expected. In the absence of a true major holiday title this year, Sony took a leaf out of Microsoft’s playbook, and went for an aggressive bundling/price cut strategy this year- the result was a PS4 with the Uncharted: Nathan Drake Collection being sold for as low as $299 at major retailers.

The result? Massive earnings, if market research firm Infoscout is to be believed- the PS4 was the highest earning product at Best Buy this Black Friday.

Of course, there are several things to remember here:

• The PS4 may have been the top earning, but it still was not the top selling
• The PS4 was only the top earning at one of the retailers
• The entire study is based on a sample size of less than 14,000 respondents, so it may not be the most accurate one around

Still, if this is a snapshot of what we can expect from the November NPD report, then it already paints a pretty interesting picture.

Black Friday truly is a wonderful time- you get all these awesome deals on all these amazing products that you have wanted for the longest time, but have not wanted to spend a whole lot of money on. From a $299 PS4 (just two years after its launch!) to a Wii U bundle that comes with the two biggest games on the system, Black Friday overall is just a great time if you are a bargain hunter.

If you are a bargain hunter, we decided we would make things easy for you. Below are listed some of the biggest and best deals on games and gaming systems in the USA, at leading retailers, organized by The Verge. Check them out for yourself, and let us know in the comments what your Black Friday haul is.

Walmart

• PlayStation 4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $299 (regularly $349)
• Nintendo Wii U with Splatoon and Super Smash Bros. for $249 (regularly $279)
• PS4 and Xbox One games for $35 (including Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, and Forza 6)

Best Buy

• PS4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• Xbox One with Gears of War Ultimate Edition for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on PS4 or Xbox One for $34.99 (regularly $59.99)
• Assassin’s Creed Syndicate on PS4 or Xbox One for $34.99 (regularly $59.99)
• Splatoon on Wii U for $34.99 (regularly $59.99)
• Batman Arkham Knight on PS4 or Xbox One for $24.99 (regularly $59.99)
• The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on PS4 or Xbox One for $24.99 (regularly $59.99)
• PS4 DualShock 4 controller for $39.99 (regularly $59.99)
• Xbox One controller for $39.99 (regularly $59.99)

Amazon

• Xbox One for $50 off (regularly $333.20)
• PS4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $50 off (regularly $347.99)
• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on PS4 and Xbox One for $25 off (regularly $59.99)

Gamestop

• Assassin’s Creed Unity free with the purchase of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate
• $20 off PS4 and Xbox One games including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Destiny: The Taken King, Batman: Arkham Knight, and more
• PS4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• Xbox One with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• Xbox One (1TB) with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition, Rare Replay, and Ori and the Blind Forest for $349.99 (regularly $399.99)

Newegg

• Intel Core i7-4790K 4.0 GHz processor for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• XFX Radeon R9 390 graphics card for $289.99 (regularly $329.99)
• SanDisk Ultra II 480GB SSD for $109.99 (regularly $169.99)
• Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD for $147.99 with Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate(regularly $199.99)

Sam’s Club

• PS4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)
• Xbox One with Gears of War: Ultimate Edition for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)

Toys R Us

• Wii U bundle with Super Smash Bros. & Splatoon for $279.98 (regularly $299.99)

Target

• PS4 with Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection for $299.99 (regularly $349.99)