Is it time to call the Xbox Kinect a hit?
By Ben Parr, Mashable
(Mashable) -- Microsoft has now sold 2.5 million units of the Xbox Kinect in less than a month.
With sales staying consistent, is it safe to say that the Kinect is a big hit for Microsoft's gaming division?
The technology giant is boasting that "strong demand over the Black Friday weekend" helped the company get the Kinect gaming devices into millions of homes in just 25 days.
In fact, the company is forecasting that it will sell 5 million units before the end of the holiday season. That's a safe assumption, given that the company has been able to sell 100,000 Kinects per day since it launched last month.
Microsoft even got Nik Nayar, Target's VP for merchandising, to lavish abundant praise on the device in its press release.
"Kinect on Xbox 360 was a top performer at Target this weekend," Nayer said. "We expect Kinect will be a must-have gift this holiday season, so Target will continue to receive consistent shipments of Kinect throughout December."
The device is shaping up to be one of the top gifts of the 2010 holiday season. There's a reason why we recently recommended the Xbox 360 with Kinect as one of our top holiday gifts.
While it's not perfect, it definitely can get a room hopping and buzzing. My non-gamer friends have had a fantastic time with my recently-acquired Kinect.
Does that mean the Kinect is a smash hit? A good place to start is the 2006 launch of the Nintendo Wii, which has gone from underdog to undisputed champion of the seventh generation console wars. In the first eight days of its U.S. launch, the Wii sold 600,000 units.
While not exactly an apples to apples comparison (yhe Wii had a $250 price tag vs. the Kinect's $150), it's still beating the pace set by the Wii during its debut.
More importantly, the Kinect is driving the sale of new motion-based games and has given the Xbox 360 fresh blood that should keep it competitive with the Wii and the PlayStation Move for the next few years.
It's still a bit early to make a definitive call on the Kinect (we want to see how it fares in Q1 and Q2 2011), but so far it looks like Microsoft has a real winner on its hands.
Credit: CNN (www.cnn.com)
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