Kinect (previously Natal)

[Family Fry]

Well the Sony guy did say..
"The 4.1M units are global sales for the company. We don't disclose our exact sell-through number"
Meaning WOOO YEAH we sold 4million to shops! YAYYY!
To be honest I still don't believe the Kinect sales are that high even though MS say that's to customers.
2.5 mil in 25 days is crazy but I can understand why.

[JSR]

I wonder how the Sony number works though. Do they only count the starter packs, or do they include the singular Move Controller?

[MJ]

I saw one in CEX today for ?150 - just the hardware, no game. They're a joke of a "shop" that place.

That's a bargain; I saw two in my local CEX last week for ?170 each, even though shops in the vicinity had brand new ones in stock.

[EvilBoris]

I wonder how the Sony number works though. Do they only count the starter packs, or do they include the singular Move Controller?

The Sony figure is any kind of Move Peripheral, so they count it as one unit if a Camera, Controller or Nav is sold.

[SmokeMeAKipper]

Ah that makes more sense now. Sony can "claim" to have outsold Kinect though the actual figures will be hard to decipher unless Sony ever provide a breakdown.

CEX prices = crazy!!

[JSR]

The Sony figure is any kind of Move Peripheral, so they count it as one unit if a Camera, Controller or Nav is sold.

By that estimate, I have bought TWO pieces of "Move" myself (starter pack and a nav). Ridiculous way of measuring sales. No wonder the numbers were so high. At least Microsoft's numbers are legit, even if they have given away a couple thousand to charitable and PR events.

[Brats]

The Sony figure is any kind of Move Peripheral, so they count it as one unit if a Camera, Controller or Nav is sold.

They said it doesn't include the navigation controller or the camera sales, but it does include every move controller. So if someone buys a camera, two move controllers and a navigation controller, it counts as two sales, not four.

To be fair, they have no way of breaking down whether each unit sold is to be used as the main controller or an additional controller. If we assume that on average, each person who buys move buys 2 controllers, that's still pretty impressive numbers. Although as someone has already said, that's shipped units, not actual sales.

[EvilBoris]

I think I had read that they had SOLD 2.5 million in the first 6 weeks, that was including all hardware

[Flabio]

Now the NPD don't publish figures, you can't really put any faith in publicly released figures unfortunately. Everyone will find ways to spin their numbers to be better.

And it doesn't really matter how well Move and Kinect are doing relative to each other. In the long run, it's whether they make back the money invested in them or not, and you'll never be told that unless you're working there. And probably not even then, hehe.

[merf]

plus making back their dev cost isn't as simple as saying sales are £Y of the unit, it cost £X to research/dev/bring to market - you have to take into account increased market penetration, incremental console sales on back of interest generated and then attach rate of additional software (with licensing income)

these things are as much about increasing the profile of xbox/playstation as a whole as straight p&l propositions in their own right.

[Flabio]

Oh ay, it's entirely possible for something to make a net loss but still be considered a success due to driving sales of the main console a bit.

[Atticus]

CEX can be more expensive because they accept Bergerac box-sets as currency ... none of the competition offer that

[nonny]

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/12/09/kinect-hacks-mit-gets-minority-report-ui-to-work-look-at-those/#continued

Seems those crafty hackers have proved it can track fingers.... ?

[Flabio]

Guess it's down to CPU power, a lot of the work has to be done on the machine the camera is plugged into rather than the camera itself.

[MJ]

I bet MS are loving all this free R&D.