An analysis by UK firm Screen Digest predicts Sony will add 7.3 million PlayStation Move-enabled consoles worldwide during calendar 2011, falling just behind predicted sales of 7.6 million Xbox 360 Kinect units for Microsoft.
The firm's predictions, as reported by GameSpot, do not include 2010 sales of the popular new motion control accessories, which launched worldwide in time for this holiday season.
Thus far, Sony says it has shipped 4.1 million Move controllers worldwide through the end of November, though it's unclear exactly how many of those have been sold through to consumers.
Strong sales for both controllers helped bump up industry-wide North American accessory sales for November by 69 percent, year over year, according to NPD numbers. The single-month results made the Kinect the top-selling gaming accessory for the entire year, the firm said.
[UPDATE: Screen Digest's Piers Harding-Rolls comments, in response to a Gamasutra request for clarification:
"Our [data] actually refers to new Move and Kinect enabled consoles added during 2011, not installed base, which we forecast to be 11.7 million for Move and 12.1 million for Kinect by end of 2011."
He added: "Please note that the Move numbers refer to Move-enabled consoles and not total Move peripheral sales (as a % are bought for multiplayer gaming on single consoles)."]
Hate to break it to said analyst firm, but they may want to go back to the drawing board. If Kinect is headed for 5 million by year end it's going to be well beyond 7.6 million by year end 2011.
Jay/Charles, we sought clarification from Screen Digest and it appears they were misquoted by GameSpot - we've put the new numbers in here, the cited numbers were for calendar 2011 only.
Even if we take the firm's analysis as given, I don't think a .3 million difference in estimates can be construed as them seeing "Kinect edging out Move through 2011." Or do you expect estimates to not have a margin of error in excess of .3 million?
Maybe lighten up with the attention-grabbing headlines? ;)
If I can defend my headline writing a little bit, I said "edging out" not "totally dominating" or "beating" or "destroying" or something. I think the 300K lead they project does count as an "edging out" even if it ends up not being true thanks to inaccurate forecasting or margin of error.
Now that they've 'clarified' the numbers, the Kinect prediction is somewhat reasonable. Now the Move prediction is way off-base. No way these systems stay that close in sales based on the data I have available.
So your main argument in your article is, Move won't sell as much as Kinect, because "Unless Sony comes out with more compelling software for the Move by June or July, hardware sales will have no driving force, and the Move will fall way short of that number".
But then I would ask, why should Kinect do so much better, then Move in your opinion? I don't see any title announced for one of the systems, that looks, like it could drive hardware sales outside the holiday period.
Which titles on Kinect should be responsible for Kinect taking a big lead?
The Move is the Wii - the tech is better, but what it can do is essentially identical. Kinect is less accurate, but is at least novel and capable of different functionality.
Most importantly, Kinect is capable of being used as an accessory WITH a controller. It can be used to enhance an otherwise normal game. The Move, on the other hand, will always be a lollipop you're holding to the exclusion of all else - all it can be is "the" controller, whether it's a good choice for the game or not. This stands to give Kinect more legs as far as long term adoption into Core games goes, whereas Move is more or less doomed to the same waggle integration that the Wii enjoyed.
Where the Move edges Kinect out is in pointer controls (of most use for FPSes, most likely). Whether that matters, though, is debatable - the ability to port more PC-like controls into a console that already supports a mouse and keyboard seems redundant and a bit backwards. You also wouldn't want to give the Move users an unfair advantage over controller players, which makes one wonder how well realized the support will actually be.
What it all boils down to is that, while yes, the PS3 offers 1:1 mapping of a stick in space into the game world, which is an improvement over the Wii's less accurate stick in space... how many actual uses of this are there? And, and is it as useful to games as the (rough but present) ability to map the player's entire body, living room and voice commands into game-space alongside normal controller inputs?
Thanks Megan for that in depth analysis. I bet Microsoft would love to hire you to their team. Unfortunately, I believe we should go by experience through each gaming device to come to our own individual liking. This world would not be what it is today as far as technology, if we did not all grasp and think differently.
I have two boys and have both the Kinect and the Move..They prefer the Move hands down. The Kinect is "boring" and the Move is "challenging." These are actual words that are the result of a gaming experience. On a personal note, the Kinect was a wonderful idea and it still is, I just think it has a few kinks to work through, I.E., the accuracy issues.
i would argue the kinect lacks any novelty at all.... it is simply a higher tech version of the eye toy as the move is simply a higher tech version of the wii mote.... and out of those two technologies, the wii has had much more success... so in the long run i imagine the move will be accepted as sony's wii mote, nothing more, nothing less, and the move will fade into obscurity as its spiritual predecessor did before it.
One of the dumbest posts I have ever read on gamasutra. Kinect is still motion control. Nothing novel about it. It's implementation is somewhat different. Big whopdi do.
And your moronic spiel about it being able to enhance a normal game flies in the face of reality. The Kinect eats up 10% of the 360's cpu cycle and thus can never be added to any of the 360's backlog or any dedicated 360 game in development as games have to be made specifically for the Kinect in order to even utilize it.
Save your fanboy rants for Kotaku. This is an industry website.
well kinect is gonna become a hit product with its tech surpassing sony with pc consumers because the tech is so new and lot more interesting applications than move
The kinect will sell better in the US alone simply because this is the 360's strongest territory and it has a much bigger lead on the PS3 here and a bigger install base in the first place helps immensely for peripheral sales.
The PS3's rather dismal console sales are not helping the move in the States as well.
However, long-term sales projections are difficult and subject to swings in consumer preferences. I don't think anyone imagined that the 360 would eventually be matching the Wii in sales given how astronomically well the Wii was doing at release. Nor would I think that many analysts had the 360 continuing to maintain second place against the PS3, especially when the PS3's Triple-A hit Gran Turismo 5 hit. But the PS3 has underwhelmed and the 360 has proven to have strong legs so far.
We will see in a few months. Personally, I think the Move is far superior for gaming as it is literally 1 for 1 movement between you and your in-game avatar when programmed correctly. It also eats up far less cpu cycles to implement thus making software developers have an easier time. But the PS3 has a branding problem whereas the Kinect is well-positioned price-wise and branding-wise in the US.
Well here is one example of what is going on out there. I'm sure its not an isolated occurrence and is happening on a larger scale.
The mechanic at my work place decided to trade in his PS3 AND Wii (with all the extra gadgets) for a 360 with Kinect bundle. He has two kids and likes to play games himself too. Apparently his kids hardly touched the Wii and he dreaded the motion stuff for the Wii. Now he has the Kinect bundle and got the kinect adventures and the dance game as well as Forza 2. When I spoke with him yesterday he was pretty excited over his new toy he was blown away by it as it was better than he expected, and apparently his kids love it and he really likes the fact of how interactive it is, the only thing he misses on the PS3 is gran turismo but said Forza is just as good, he almost lost it when I told him Forza 4 will have Rally. One big strength he pointed out that the Kinect has is there is little to no delay, whereas the Wii has delay.
Here is a neat little tidbit though...Wow being controlled with Kinect.
The problem with this logic will be the time. Did he used WiiSports more or less he is using Kinect games at the time he bought the Wii? That is the fair comparison. WiiSports kept the Wii selling much ahead of his competitors for far too long. Will Kinect games do the same? What Kinect game there is that is not available in other platforms? Because that was the Wii advantage - WiiSports could not be played anywhere else.
If your mechanic traded in a PS3 and a Wii + extra gadgets (and software I guess), to get a 360 Kinect bundle and 2 games, he made a very poor trade, thats for sure.
But was making me wonder even more, was, the he says the Kinect has little to no delay, while he was thinking, the Wii had delay. This is ovioulsy not the case, the delay on Kinect is visible to everyone and one of the major complaints of everybody who played with it (regardless, if they liked it in the end and said, it could be easily ignored or not), while the delay on the Wii depends strongly on the game you play and is today in most games non existant.
I think the numbers were more accurate the first time. Peripherals added in the middle of a console cycle never do as well as they are projecting. Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
@Gordon: Normally true, but the Wii Balance Board beat a lot of projections.
I find these numbers suspect because they're based on sales of a new product released during the holiday season. Move/Kinect could continue to sell in 2011, or they could be this year's "Zhu Zhu".
IMHO, the real deciding factor will be the games released in 2011. One or two "must have" titles for either product are required to keep them from collecting dust in the stores.
@Doug: I mostly agree with your post. However I wouldn't say that the Wii Balance Board beat projections. I'd say the game itself Wii Fit beat projections. Good software can always come along and sell well, and sometimes the software will come bundled with peripherals.
The problem with focusing on Kinect or Move is that the focus is mistakenly on technology. No one bought Guitar Hero or Rockband for the plastic guitar alone. People wanted the plastic guitar so that they could play the game. It's the games that matter, not the hardware. The problem with Kinect and Move is that everyone is focusing on the hardware and yet there is really no exciting software on either platform.
It sounds like they are predicting (extrapolated from their updated numbers):
4.4M Move enabled consoles [and not just controllers sold]
4.5M Kinect enabled consoles
Those numbers sound off, based on what we've heard, so far, from Sony, Microsoft, NPD, and other charting services. The Move number seems high [more than the number of controllers that Sony had announced shipped in November] and low for the Kinect [below Microsoft's announced estimate for the year].
We'll know soon enough, though, since I'm sure there will be new Sony and Microsoft announcements to coincide with December NPD's.
Sony keeps stating PS Move(s) 'Moved' or rather 'shipped' . The point is. Kinect was pretty much marketed to get a 'huge' install base to hopefully encourage developers to ensure a stream of games. It's amazing for the cost , development time and addition of a camera and IR that it seems no more reliable than my PS Eye. Unfortunately , it seems the 'average' audience for these items has little patience to actually calibrate them. I'm afraid the better tech might mean nothing if the software doesn't handle the calibration process more smoothly, less often and to a better end. I am patient enough to calibrate dual move controllers for a far superior boxing sim in 'The Fight - lights out" but even I , am not going to change the 'lighting' in my living room to get 'head tracking' to work. if the move makes Killzone 3 more enjoyable to play with a Move and Nav controller than a dual shock alone .... The might give M$ a run for there 'advertising' money. Otherwise, I'm afraid both of these devices will gather dust on retail shelves by Spring. IMO.
You are correct in that the newness of these will wear off. Sadly the Wii is seeing the effects of this. Sadly Nintendo has done nothing to help the lack of third party content that the XBOX and PS3 derive success from. Buying a Kinect has actually prompted me to sell my Wii since the Kinect does it better and provides more options than the Wii.
I am probably in the minority where I use my Kinect for more than just games though. I see Kinect as more than just a motion controller and the uses beyond the intention of MS is what will propel the Kinect beyond just the use of a controller. We are already starting to see the online internet community tear the Kinect apart and do things that are unreal. As we progress with working on this technology and maximizing the use beyond gaming, you will start to see the use of it grow.
Continued support of this by third party developers like Rare will only help push the Kinect to newer heights. Unlike the Wii and the PS3, Microsoft did something right and created a peripheral that goes beyond just controlling the game. Whether that was their intention or not, it is still the possibility where the PS3 and Wii are limited to just being a controller.
This is not to say the Kinect is perfect since there are many flaws that need to be addressed by MS, but I am sure they will come in time. I appreciate the Wii for progressing the technology, PS3 for moving it forward, but I think as games come out there will be a clear winner.
Anyways my point is that when the hype fades for motion controllers, the Kinect still has uses beyond that of a controller.
10 million, 11 million, what's the difference? Neither is close to altering the increasingly losing prospects of the console game development business. 50 million and we'll talk.
Maybe lighten up with the attention-grabbing headlines? ;)
But then I would ask, why should Kinect do so much better, then Move in your opinion? I don't see any title announced for one of the systems, that looks, like it could drive hardware sales outside the holiday period.
Which titles on Kinect should be responsible for Kinect taking a big lead?
The Move is the Wii - the tech is better, but what it can do is essentially identical. Kinect is less accurate, but is at least novel and capable of different functionality.
Most importantly, Kinect is capable of being used as an accessory WITH a controller. It can be used to enhance an otherwise normal game. The Move, on the other hand, will always be a lollipop you're holding to the exclusion of all else - all it can be is "the" controller, whether it's a good choice for the game or not. This stands to give Kinect more legs as far as long term adoption into Core games goes, whereas Move is more or less doomed to the same waggle integration that the Wii enjoyed.
Where the Move edges Kinect out is in pointer controls (of most use for FPSes, most likely). Whether that matters, though, is debatable - the ability to port more PC-like controls into a console that already supports a mouse and keyboard seems redundant and a bit backwards. You also wouldn't want to give the Move users an unfair advantage over controller players, which makes one wonder how well realized the support will actually be.
What it all boils down to is that, while yes, the PS3 offers 1:1 mapping of a stick in space into the game world, which is an improvement over the Wii's less accurate stick in space... how many actual uses of this are there? And, and is it as useful to games as the (rough but present) ability to map the player's entire body, living room and voice commands into game-space alongside normal controller inputs?
I have two boys and have both the Kinect and the Move..They prefer the Move hands down. The Kinect is "boring" and the Move is "challenging." These are actual words that are the result of a gaming experience. On a personal note, the Kinect was a wonderful idea and it still is, I just think it has a few kinks to work through, I.E., the accuracy issues.
http://smarthouse.com.au/Gaming/Industry/J4M6D6L9
And your moronic spiel about it being able to enhance a normal game flies in the face of reality. The Kinect eats up 10% of the 360's cpu cycle and thus can never be added to any of the 360's backlog or any dedicated 360 game in development as games have to be made specifically for the Kinect in order to even utilize it.
Save your fanboy rants for Kotaku. This is an industry website.
The PS3's rather dismal console sales are not helping the move in the States as well.
However, long-term sales projections are difficult and subject to swings in consumer preferences. I don't think anyone imagined that the 360 would eventually be matching the Wii in sales given how astronomically well the Wii was doing at release. Nor would I think that many analysts had the 360 continuing to maintain second place against the PS3, especially when the PS3's Triple-A hit Gran Turismo 5 hit. But the PS3 has underwhelmed and the 360 has proven to have strong legs so far.
We will see in a few months. Personally, I think the Move is far superior for gaming as it is literally 1 for 1 movement between you and your in-game avatar when programmed correctly. It also eats up far less cpu cycles to implement thus making software developers have an easier time. But the PS3 has a branding problem whereas the Kinect is well-positioned price-wise and branding-wise in the US.
The mechanic at my work place decided to trade in his PS3 AND Wii (with all the extra gadgets) for a 360 with Kinect bundle. He has two kids and likes to play games himself too. Apparently his kids hardly touched the Wii and he dreaded the motion stuff for the Wii. Now he has the Kinect bundle and got the kinect adventures and the dance game as well as Forza 2. When I spoke with him yesterday he was pretty excited over his new toy he was blown away by it as it was better than he expected, and apparently his kids love it and he really likes the fact of how interactive it is, the only thing he misses on the PS3 is gran turismo but said Forza is just as good, he almost lost it when I told him Forza 4 will have Rally. One big strength he pointed out that the Kinect has is there is little to no delay, whereas the Wii has delay.
Here is a neat little tidbit though...Wow being controlled with Kinect.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/12/28/0928236/Microsoft-Kinect-With-World-of-
Warcraft
If your mechanic traded in a PS3 and a Wii + extra gadgets (and software I guess), to get a 360 Kinect bundle and 2 games, he made a very poor trade, thats for sure.
But was making me wonder even more, was, the he says the Kinect has little to no delay, while he was thinking, the Wii had delay. This is ovioulsy not the case, the delay on Kinect is visible to everyone and one of the major complaints of everybody who played with it (regardless, if they liked it in the end and said, it could be easily ignored or not), while the delay on the Wii depends strongly on the game you play and is today in most games non existant.
I find these numbers suspect because they're based on sales of a new product released during the holiday season. Move/Kinect could continue to sell in 2011, or they could be this year's "Zhu Zhu".
IMHO, the real deciding factor will be the games released in 2011. One or two "must have" titles for either product are required to keep them from collecting dust in the stores.
The problem with focusing on Kinect or Move is that the focus is mistakenly on technology. No one bought Guitar Hero or Rockband for the plastic guitar alone. People wanted the plastic guitar so that they could play the game. It's the games that matter, not the hardware. The problem with Kinect and Move is that everyone is focusing on the hardware and yet there is really no exciting software on either platform.
It sounds like they are predicting (extrapolated from their updated numbers):
4.4M Move enabled consoles [and not just controllers sold]
4.5M Kinect enabled consoles
Those numbers sound off, based on what we've heard, so far, from Sony, Microsoft, NPD, and other charting services. The Move number seems high [more than the number of controllers that Sony had announced shipped in November] and low for the Kinect [below Microsoft's announced estimate for the year].
We'll know soon enough, though, since I'm sure there will be new Sony and Microsoft announcements to coincide with December NPD's.
You are correct in that the newness of these will wear off. Sadly the Wii is seeing the effects of this. Sadly Nintendo has done nothing to help the lack of third party content that the XBOX and PS3 derive success from. Buying a Kinect has actually prompted me to sell my Wii since the Kinect does it better and provides more options than the Wii.
I am probably in the minority where I use my Kinect for more than just games though. I see Kinect as more than just a motion controller and the uses beyond the intention of MS is what will propel the Kinect beyond just the use of a controller. We are already starting to see the online internet community tear the Kinect apart and do things that are unreal. As we progress with working on this technology and maximizing the use beyond gaming, you will start to see the use of it grow.
Continued support of this by third party developers like Rare will only help push the Kinect to newer heights. Unlike the Wii and the PS3, Microsoft did something right and created a peripheral that goes beyond just controlling the game. Whether that was their intention or not, it is still the possibility where the PS3 and Wii are limited to just being a controller.
This is not to say the Kinect is perfect since there are many flaws that need to be addressed by MS, but I am sure they will come in time. I appreciate the Wii for progressing the technology, PS3 for moving it forward, but I think as games come out there will be a clear winner.
Anyways my point is that when the hype fades for motion controllers, the Kinect still has uses beyond that of a controller.
Rare is a subsidiary of the Microsoft Game Studios and not a 3rd party developer.