Kinect, Move Both Selling Well

The two big gaming hardware introductions for the holidays, Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move, are both selling well out of the gate. Microsoft has boasted of selling more than 1 million Kinects in 10 days, and they expect to exceed their enhanced target of 5 million units through the holiday season. They also noted it would be launching in Asia in a few days, though anyone who knows how poorly the Xbox 360 has done in Japan would know not to expect too many sales for Kinect from there.

Sony, not to be outdone, has also stated that Move has sold more than 1 million units in North America and 1.5 million in Latin America, though they haven't provided recent updates for those figures. Of course, the Move is only $49 compared to the Kinect's $149... though of course you really want to get a couple of Moves to equal what the Kinect gives you.

Both motion control packages seem to be doing well, and probably will continue to do so during the holidays. The big loser in all of this is Nintendo, as Microsoft and Sony have just taken away one of the Wii's major selling points as the only console with motion control. Both Microsoft and Sony now offer better motion control solutions than Nintendo, though Nintendo still has them on price.

But I think this changes much of the argument over which console to get. When the Wii was first introduced, I think part of why it did so well was because it was a great family-oriented console, as well as being $200 to $300 cheaper than what Sony and Microsoft were selling. Now, all three consoles have a nice array of family-friendly, easy to play titles (Kinect being even easier with no controllers whatsoever), and the price differential is down to $150 or even $100 (not if you count the motion control bundles, true). So the kids can argue more successfully for the Xbox 360 or PS3 with all the cool games they really want... because the family can play games on them too. (And if you want a Blu-ray player, the PS3 becomes an even better deal.)

Is it a coincidence that Wii sales are off 60% over last year? Yet Nintendo seems to be content to rearrange the deck chairs rather than changing course. I think Santa's gonna bring them a lump of coal for Christmas.