The Kinect certainly has momentum behind it. Today, Microsoft announced that it has sold one million of the video game peripherals in only 10 days. If this pace keeps up, it is on course to easily break its holiday sales projections of five million. It did not, however, provide any details on how the units were sold. Customers can buy the $150 Kinect add-on camera alone or as part of a bundle with the Xbox 360. Still, it is unlikely that the PlayStation Move or Wii have sold a million units in the last 10 days. A win is a win is a win for the Redmond company, and Kinect appears to be a win.
Dennis Durkin, corporate VP and chief operating and financial officer of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, said that units are being sold as fast as they can be manufactured, according to CNET. Microsoft is spending $500 million to advertise the new device over the holidays.
Microsoft’s Kinect allows users to play games without any controller at all using a unique combination of cameras to accurately detect depth and movement. The experience is Microsoft’s answer to the Nintendo Wii. Sony, for its part, launched it’s own Wii-like motion wand, PlayStation Move, this fall. Not sure who to root for? We’ve got a full comparison between Move and Kinect, and reviews of the Kinect and its launch games.
Have you seen any lines for Kinect? Still trying to get one. Let us know!
This shouldn’t shock anyone. When a company spends millions upon millions of dollars on advertising, they can’t help selling a ton of units; that’s pretty much how Marketing works: you don’t have to be creative, just stick your name out where ever you can and you’ll sell product (and let’s face it, MSFT has never been known for its amazing advertising). Had Sony put more than $25.00 into advertising the Move, I’m sure they would have sold just as many units.
The problem is that hardware doesn’t make money. Sources put the cost of developing the Kinect at around $150, if not more; you can sell a billion units but if you only make $0.10 per unit, that amounts to $100,000,000 which is a lot of money but factor in that Microsoft will spend $500,000,000 to promote the Kinect, you have a $400,000,000 loss on the books. While the Kinect is fresh, one has to wonder if there is enough steam for Microsoft to make up that loss in game sales – after all, how many track/adventure/dance games can you make before people become bored?
is that good. I think not.
How many will they actually deliver in a 30 day window however….
WHY?!? My god… I’m in the wrong freaking business. I need to get into marketing.
I am looking everywhere for a kinect, and I can't find a store that stills has some, it's sold out on stores and on-line.