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Kinect connect rate outstrips Sony PS3 Move

Analyst outs sell-through stats

Microsoft shipped around 8m Kinect Xbox add-ons during 2010, trouncing its earlier forecast of 5m units.

An impressive performance, perhaps, until you see the next number provided, like the above, by market watcher IHS iSuppli: those shipments led to over-the-counter sales of 6.36m Kinects.

So, as of the start of January this year, there were rather a lot - 1.64m - Kinects sitting in retailers' warehouses and on shop shelves.

Still, the total sold is more than a million units higher than the 5.23m PlayStation Move accessories, Sony has said were bought by consumers up to the end of 2010.

Considering the fact that one PS3 can play host to more than one Move controller, IHS iSuppli analyst Piers Harding-Rolls said he estimates only 4.26m Sony consoles were capable of playing Move games during that period - 2.1m fewer than the number of Kinect-connected Xbox 360s.

Move was launched a month ahead of Kinect. But lest you think these figures are all about the relative merits of the two products, it's telling that IHS iSuppli clearly thinks Microsoft's "heavy marketing investment" had a lot to do with it.

Sony's implicitly much lower promotional spend "showed in sales", Harding-Rolls concludes.

Whether Sony thought its offering was strong enough on its own merits, or it decided Microsoft's alternative would fail to deliver, it was seemingly too cocky to spend enough money pushing its product. It may not make the same mistake next time. ®

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