Yesterday the world and his dog received a Sony press release proudly proclaiming a pretty darn impressive 4.1m PlayStation Move sales, as this figure excluded add-ons like the PlayStation Eye and the Navi Controller things looked to be ticking along very nicely indeed.
However, while Sony’s announcement used the word “sales” in relation to the impressive number, it actually meant “shipped”. Shipped relates purely to sales to retailers, whereas sales relates to sales through to end users. A common train of thought is that the numbers may not be all that different, but retailers would almost certainly have purchased sufficient stock to enable them to have uninterrupted supply through Christmas and maybe even a good way afterwards. This sheds a very different light on the number of PlayStation Moves actually sold through to us gamers.
Eurogamer has spoken to everyone’s favourite analyst Michael Patcher, who said “I understand that they sold through around one million through the end of October (tracking NPD results and extrapolating for Europe), and it’s reasonable that with the Japanese launch they have sold through another 1.5 million in November, but I’d peg the sell through number at closer to 2.5 million, or exactly on par with Kinect, albeit over a longer time frame.”
Of course critics could also point to the fact that 2.5m unit sales doesn’t mean it’s in that number of homes as many people may have bought more than one Move Controller, as would be expected with a motion controlling device which is geared towards the social side of gaming.
Billy Pidgeon, M2 Research senior analyst said that the Move sales into retail are “impressive”, but insisted comparisons with Kinect are better left until after the dust settles on 2010. He went on to say:
“Nintendo’s strategy to fully embrace motion control with the Wii (in addition to value pricing enabled by playing against the prevailing tech leader console design) was effective and disruptive.
Both Sony and Microsoft were initially dismissive of motion control and Wii but are now big believers. Many observers were also dismissive of Wii and remain sceptical about Move and Kinect. They are wrong.
I believe both will do well and that motion control and other interfaces using intuitive control (gesture, touch, voice) will continue to manifest strong traction into the next generation of consoles as well as in convergent devices such as smart phones, tablets and PC.”
So whilst things aren’t looking quite so rosy as Sony’s press release initially had everyone believe, it does appear that people in the know think the future is looking bright for motion control as a whole, even though Kinect appears to be firmly in the driving seat, for now.
cam the man
Although I think the Move is a good piece of kit I’m not interested in controlling games in that way.
TSBonyman
I would love to have some concrete figures to analyse but i guess all we can do until then is make educated guesses…. Michael bloody Pachter ;)
Person678
Regardless if Kinect has sold more or in a short time, it’s impressive figures.
jimmy-google
All I know is that Move controllers are becoming increasingly hard to find in stores or online.
jayjay119
Well if that is the case then stores must be selling out which means the 4+ million shiping units may be closer to actual sales figures than the above article suggests. I have noticed shortages for Move but not for Kinect, which is strange considering MS have been saying there will be.
RedStarGlow
Glad the ADs are gone. In my home the score is Sony = 4 SOLD, MS = 0 (or maybe it is 1 Sale and it is sitting at the store). Nothing confusing about that.
Deathmunger
Who can blame them, it’s a clever marketing scheme, if people are sitting on the proverbial fence whether or not to buy,and then see massive figures like that it would indicate that it is very good, a success and all sorts of other things – worth the buy. This would have a domino effect causing more to buy more to see people buying it and it goes on..