Kinect May Be The Hot Item This Christmas Season

Now I have to admit, I chuckled a little bit when Kudo Tsunoda said that Kinect sales would, “blow away any of the sales you’ve seen with iPad.”  But, you have to admit that selling over 2.5 million units in 25 days is extremely impressive.  Moreover, it looks to be on track to actually be a good contender to blow out Apple’s impressive record with the motion controller.

Furthermore, there appears to be a shortage of the Xbox 360 Console Bundles with the Kinect Sensor this Christmas season, indicating a larger demand for the device than expected.  There has been some speculation that Microsoft had actually engineered the shortage as a way to artificially increase demand for their new product, but Neil Thompson, General Manager for Xbox in the UK says it just isn’t so in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.

“Anyone who actually works in the business of producing new technology, especially hardware technology, will know that these things are never managed. Everyone else loves to think that they’re managed, but they will know it’s not. It’s a function of coming to market with a brand new innovation and you have to scale up,”

GI.B notes that Don Mattrick did in fact, warn us that we would want to make sure that we got our orders in early.  Which he did.  And no one better at the time would have known how well Kinect sales were going to do.

Well.  Someone knew better.

A quick check online shows the 250GB Console bundle with Kinect is absent from Best Buy‘s website, with only the 4GB bundle and the standalone Kinect sensor available, as well as the 250GB Holiday Bundle including Alan Wake and Forza Motorsport 3.

On Gamestop‘s website, you can still find the bundle listed, however, it is not currently available for sale.

While I do not think that Microsoft actually engineered the shortage of their higher priced bundles, I do believe that they may have underestimated the demand for the $400 option, believing that the consumers would be more likely drawn to the 4GB console bundle due to the lower cost ($299).  It appears that consumers may be making a more informed decision about the benefits of having a hard drive attached to the unit to store games, saves, and downloadable content.

Whether it be due to “demand engineering”, or just simply demand, it appears that Microsoft’s Kinect for the Xbox 360 is on just about everybody’s Christmas list this year.

Primary Source: GamesIndustry.biz