Console hardware sales are getting a lot of scrutiny of late. Last year, the industry-tracking NPD Group began releasing monthly breakdowns of US retail hardware sales and found its numbers getting a lot of play in both mainstream and specialist press outlets.

　　With the unofficial start to the holiday retail season having kicked off after the Thanksgiving holiday, CNBC's Tech Check blog is giving a glimpse of how Microsoft's Xbox 360 fared over the week of "Black Friday," which ran from November 18 to 24.

　　In an addendum to a story on the console maker's various woes with Xbox 360 reliability, Tech Check reports that US consumers purchased more than 310,000 systems for the week of November 18. For the entire month of October, the NPD Group reported Xbox 360 sales of 366,000, compared with 519,000 Wiis and 121,000 PlayStation 3s.

　　If true, the 310,000 figure is near the 350,000 Wiis Nintendo reported were sold during Black Friday week. So far, Sony has not reported exact sales numbers for the PS3 but did say that sales of the console increased 245 percent during the seven-day period.

　　[UPDATE] Microsoft confirmed the 310,000 figure to GameSpot, and went on to claim that "according to estimates from top retailers," the Xbox 360 outsold the PlayStation 3 by a ratio of 2:1 for the week.