While skepticism remains high about how much success Kinect can achieve, Microsoft is proud to shove that skepticism in people’s faces. The company announced that they have sold over 2.5 million units of Kinect, with the potential of 5 million units shipped by year’s end becoming a possibility.
Microsoft’s controller-less controller (that’s funny) is apparently doing better than many expected, especially with the Xbox 360 crowd assumed to be primarily hardcore first-person-shooter types. Even more impressive is the fact that Kinect is experiencing this growth while only having around 20 games available for it. This paints a bright future for motion-centric games like Kinect. And maybe the competition has something to worry about.
Unfortunately, sales figures for Sony’s PlayStation Move controller have not been made available, which could mean that the company isn’t too impressed with the sales figures. However, to put things into perspective, the Nintendo Wii averages around 46,000 sales for its controllers on a daily basis. Still a long road to travel before Microsoft ousts Nintendo.
Nevertheless, Kinect is unquestionably one of the most innovative things in gaming right now. It’s just a question of how well this innovation can attract Xbox 360 users and those who have already embraced systems like Nintendo Wii.
As reported by Reuters
Update: Sony has announced its sales to retailers for the PlayStation Move controller. The company has sold 4.1 million units to retailers worldwide. However, keep in mind that this number does not represent actual sales and/or popularity of the device. It is somewhat deceiving on Sony’s part to release such a press release (PDF in Japanese). It appears that Sony wants to downplay Microsoft’s numbers.
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