Ben-DutkaSlow and steady wins the race.
At the start of the new motion-sensing battle between Sony and Microsoft, it was Kinect that bolted out to an early lead. But over time, sales have fallen off while Move's sales have remained solid.
The result? Move is now only about a million units behind Kinect in overall sales, and even that gap may be closing. Kinect hit 8 million sold in only two months, and then topped 10 million in March. Move has reached the 9 million mark (although we need recent stats). Said IndustryGamers' Steve Peterson:
"The Kinect's weakness has been the sales pattern, where 8 million devices sold in 2 months, and then in the next 10 months only 2 million more devices were sold. This has led to some concerns."
Ubisoft vice president of marketing Tony Key added that it isn't healthy to sell only during the holidays, and they'd "really like to see them [Microsoft] have some major launches during the non-holiday part of the year." There are a lot Kinect bundles out there for the holiday rush, after all.
If the two different sales arcs hold true next year, Move should surpass Kinect, especially if Sony can release a few much-needed AAA titles for their motion-sensing system.
It's not surprising since Sony continually puts in Move support to its AAA games and 3rd party companies are showing a willingness to put same support in their games.
All MS is doing is rehashing their 2010 hits to the converted and little else.
Sony putting Move into their AAA games is not a good thing imo. I know some will disagree with me but creating KZ3 around Move made KZ3 suck for anyone not into Move. Infact I've heard that KZ3 with Move sucks so I don't get that it's a good thing.
Then again, I don't own Move and never will, so who am I to argue?
I played KZ3 without the Move and it was still great. I have the Move and tried using it with KZ3 and it was cool but it takes some practice. If you don't have the Move it's not going to ruin the game for you just give people with a Move for more variety.
I don't see the problem when you can play it either way…
KZ3 with the move was a blast. KZ3 with just a DS3 was not as much fun. It lacked something that KZ2 had.
Regardless of how well it sells, mine has officially been collecting dust for months now. Blah.
Move still needs better games.
Very much so. I would even have been happy with a sequel of Sports Champions with bigger maps (especially the frisbee game had potential of being *so* much more than what it was).
… But now Microsoft launch Kinect for PC too.
Last edited by Beamboom on 11/24/2011 10:50:29 AM
They are officially putting it on PC, but PC gamers have been using it long before that. The Move, and Wii Motion can also be used on PC.
So it will not affect the sales numbers much then, you think?
Might go up a little but not much I don't think.
Just comes to show that most of Kinect's sales were "hype" sales. I guess Microsoft's $500 million advertisement campaign ultimately didn't do much for the long run.
I don't even think MS cares about this issue in the short term. It got them the 360 sales spike they were looking for and a foothold into the casual market. They accomplished their goals and have shown they can shift a lot of Kinect units when they put their marketing muscle behind it and that Kinect is a viable product. They have put the Kinect name in gamers and the publics minds more than the Move with that insane advertising blitz. I'm sure MS will incorparate Kinect into its next system. TVs and PCs as well. Sounds like they have a long term plan.
Not sure what Sony's long term plans are in regard to Move but I don't think their plans will be quite as ambitous as MS's. That's okay though. I know that some hardcore gamers have been turned off by MS's focus on casual gamers. Maybe Sony's slow and less loud strategy with the Move will run less of a risk of alienating the hardcore gamers.
It's reported that MS and SONY are in talks for SONY to license Kinect for use in its TV's.
The only reason I doubt that being true is because Sony has better tracking technology, and as one of the pioneers of 3D entertainment, they understand triangulation principles as well. It would not be any hard effort at all for Sony to make their own version of Kinect, if that type of thing is truly what they want to have in their televisions.
Where I live, Kinect is very popular among the non hardcore. Even my girlfriend is asking me to buy one. Hell no! I'm not into motion controls for games.
Though I'm curious about being able to control the 360 via voice and Minority Report style.
Meanwhile, Move is collecting dust on store shelves.
I have personally built a bathroom and gaming room in my unfinished basement over the last two years. (A couple more rooms to go.) I just really like building my own rooms with my own hands. Satisfying.
Both of these rooms are voice automated. My bathroom has speakers in the ceiling, and I have a multi-directional microphone hidden in the ceiling with the light as well. While in the shower, I can talk to my computer to play anything in my itunes account.
These technologies are not all that new. I made my own home media network… by following faqs on the internet. I had to laugh when Microsoft was selling it as a feature for the Kinect. I built it myself for cheap. (Got 2 nice ceiling speakers for $30 and the multi-directional mic was $10. The only other added cost was audio wire and audio jacks in the wall in case I ever wanted to put in a receiver or cd player on the top shelf of the bathroom closet.)
Of course… buying a 360 and kinect is easier than simple ingenuity.
Neither of them have great games yet…hmm.
not surprising since move has heaps of popular games like KZ3, socom 4, infamous and such.
kinect on the other hand, well you have shovelware like rise of nightmares, or kids games like kinectimals, or girls games like dance central 2.
when M$ adds kinect to halo, or gears, or even into ninja gaiden, or MGSR would be interesting.
only kinect title im interested in is ryse, that looks really cool!
and crytek always release f*cking awesome games!
The Kinect's voice functionality is not that great. it doesn't really cancel out background noise that much and you have to tell people to quiet down. There was even one time when I told Xbox Kinect to S*** a D*** because it was so frustrating and it went to Dashboard -_____- WTH?