Microsoft Corp boosted its forecast for the Kinect motion-control device for the Xbox gaming system to 5 million units this quarter, predicting the most successful Xbox product debut by sales.
Based on pre-sales, retail orders and consumer interest, the company expects to exceed a previous forecast of 3 million units, Don Mattrick, president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, said in an interview yesterday. The device, which lets players control games with motion and voice, was to go on sale yesterday.
Microsoft and Sony Corp, with its Move controller, are competing against Nintendo Co’s Wii. Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, is using Kinect to attract a larger slice of the market for casual gamers, while extending the life of its Xbox 360 console, which went on sale in 2005.
Sony has been selling Move since mid-September. Michael Pachter, a video-game analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc in Los Angeles, predicted Sony would sell about 3 million units this year.
Microsoft dropped US$0.36 cents to US$27.03 at 4pm New York time in NASDAQ Stock Market trading. The shares have fallen 11 percent this year.
Kinect costs US$149.99 alone and comes bundled with Xbox machines, starting at US$299.99. It sold out in preorders at retailers such as Amazon.com Inc, Best Buy Co and GameStop Corp, according to David Hufford, a Microsoft spokesman. Those stores were to have more stock when the product went on sale, he said.
In the US, 25,000 retailers will sell the device and 5,000 of those were to stay open for customers who wanted to purchase Kinect at midnight. Microsoft was to hold a midnight event at the Toys “R” Us store in New York’s Times Square.
“They are really defining Kinect as the must-have holiday item,” Mattrick said of retailers. “It means it’s going to be our biggest holiday ever.”
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