Black Friday month has well and truly kicked off – this week has seen a whole heap of retailers and tech manufacturers kick off their seasonal sales ahead of the big day on 29 November. If you're in the market for a new console and an Xbox has taken your fancy, it looks like a pretty great time to shop around.
We're gathering the very best games console deals this Black Friday if you want to take a wider view of things, but those who intend to stick to Xbox's offering might be curious as to when the console giant's own sale starts. Well, there's good news for some of you – it's already ongoing if you're in the US, while those of us in the UK or elsewhere have to wait a little longer.
This means US customers can grab savings on not just consoles but also a wide range of games, to either start a new library or build up your collection, which is ideal. That said, the console deals are relatively modest as it stands, so it's quite possible that steeper discounts will arrive in time.
If you're in the US, the biggest headline reduction is a very simple one, knocking $50 off the price of a standard 1TB Xbox Series X, making it $449.99 instead of $499.99 – a price that should be reflected across a range of retailers. This is actually the only official console deal that Xbox is offering right now – the Xbox Series S hasn't been touched, and nor have the newer 2TB or digital-only Xbox Series X consoles.
There are a huge number of games discounted on the Xbox Store, though, as you'll see if you check out the long list of titles currently reduced. This includes some excellent and relatively recent blockbusters, like Resident Evil 4 for $19.99 instead of $39.99. There are also some value packs, such as the excellent A Plague Tale Bundle, which gets you two superb single-player stealth games for just $27.99 instead of $79.99.
Those are just a couple of the many top options you could find – and from the sound of things, you can expect many more deals to land on the day of Black Friday itself. Last year saw lightning deals knocking bigger chunks off the price of Xbox's consoles, and we'd definitely expect some similar deals, so make sure you keep checking back to see what highlights are live. If you want to know about PlayStation's Black Friday sale, or indeed Nintendo's discounts, we've got you covered with an explainer on each.