Amazon has seen a significant amount of interest in upcoming next-generation consoles, with pre-orders for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 skyrocketing in the wake of E3 and their initial availability on the site. The pre-order volume broke records for the Amazon Video Games store, resulting in a 4,000 percent year-over-year increase vs. console pre-orders during E3 last year.
In just the first day of pre-orders alone, the Xbox One and PS4 managed to rack up nearly twice the value of total sales made via the video game store on Amazon throughout all of Black Friday in 2012, which is traditionally the top shopping day of the year in the U.S. Demand for the two new consoles was so strong that at peak volume, orders were coming through at a rate in excess of 2,500 units per minute, Amazon tells us.
In typical Amazon fashion, the company isn’t revealing specifics about how many total pre-orders have been processed so far, but the company is saying in no uncertain terms that there’s ample demand. The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 occupy two of the top three spots in the Amazon Best Sellers list for Video Games, for instance (critical smash hit The Last of Us occupies spot two). Additionally, retail store pre-orders of the consoles appear to be strong, too, with some locations selling out of the Xbox One quickly following Microsoft’s decision to reverse its position on used games and DRM.
Relative increases and high order per minute are all well and good, but the real story will be how many of these things actually ship. Nintendo had strong initial sales of the Wii U, but sales quickly tapered off after the holiday season and are basically on life support. But at least based on these figures, there’s still plenty of juice left in the old console market for now.