Posts in “Gaming”
Kinect Selling Out All Over The UK. What about US?
Reports that Play, Amazon, and other retailers in the UK are selling out of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360 are big news on the web. But what about at home?
A quick websurfing does show that online retailer Newegg is sold out of the standalone device (stock# N82E16874103199), the 4GB Xbox 360S bundle (stock# N82E16868105044) and the 250GB Xbox 360S Bundle (stock#N82E16868105045). However, Gamestop, Amazon.com (not to be confused with Amazon.co.uk), and most other major retailers are still offering pre-orders.
What does this mean?
While it’s fantastic news that the Kinect sensor is doing so well in the UK, this most likely means that the number of Kinect units that have been allocated to the UK was significantly lower than what has been allocated in the US.
Newegg is not a huge retailer of Xbox items in the United States. And thus, they have most likely not received a large portion of the units allocated for the launch. So they most likely have just hit their limit. However, the larger retailers who make up the bulk of Xbox console and software sales should be granted the largest share to hand out to the consumer.
A twist!
However, after surfing BestBuy.com. I found this:
Updated 1:18PMEST
I called Best Buy and verified that they have indeed stopped taking pre-orders for the Kinect 250GB bundle, and the standalone unit. They did say that they have gone to Microsoft and requested additional units to be allocated. So while this is not likely a long term issue, it does look like for the time being they are out of stock. However, the 4GB units are still available.
Continued checking does show that Gamestop is still accepting orders. More news forthcoming.
While I was going to say that it’s most likely just going to be the smaller retailers that would sell out, it would appear that Best Buy has thrown a monkey into my wrench.
Update 7:04PM – Best Buy now has the standalone unit available for pre-order, however the 250GB consoles are still sold out.
Console News for Wednesday, October 13
VGChartz Releases Sales Numbers For Week Ending Oct. 2
Wii – 138,378 PS3 – 149,925 Xbox360 – 179,491
Sales figures are in and they aren’t looking pretty for Nintendo. The Wii lost more ground against both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 last week by 11,000 units and 41,000 units respectively. This is part of a continuing slide in sales that began with the Xbox gaining ground in July after the release of the 360S line, and recently became worse as the PS3 vaulted over the Wii by 22,000 units in September. Trends continuing the way they are, it’s very possible that Nintendo could find itself being left in third place for 2010’s total sales. The tally so far (Beginning from 02-January):
Wii – 7,162,858 PS3 – 5,614,468 XBox 360 – 5,610,057
Source: VGChartz
The other surprising twist is Microsoft closing in on Sony after packing in almost a million unit lead through June. Microsoft has since seen a massive boost in sales as older units were marked down to make way for the 360S, and the subsequent sales of the newly styled unit. The gap for the year is now only a paltry 5,000 units. If this trend continues, Microsoft is poised to come in number one for home console sales for the year.
NPD Discontinuing Public Disclosure Of Console Sales
An article posted yesterday by VG247 states that as of now, NPD will not be releasing monthly hardware unit sales figures to the public, leaving the console manufacturers to do so.
According to Wedbush Morgan analyst, Michael Pachter, “I pay a lot for access to the data, and probably could have skipped the hardware piece and gotten from the manufacturers directly, so they don’t want paying customers like me to turn off their subscriptions.”
The question I have to pose is how can he pay so much money for all that data and still be so horrible at predicting stuff?
Source: VG247
AT&T Uverse coming to Xbox 360
Documents leaked to Engadget show that not only is AT&T Uverse coming to the Xbox 360 for real, but real soon. November 7th actually. Just in time for the holidays and coinciding with the release of Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, this should be quite a booster on its own.
The question is, will it be enabled with a Kinect friendly menu as was demonstrated with the upcoming ESPN app at E3 earlier this year? Only time will tell!
Unfortunately, I see this as being a mutually exclusive deal. Meaning, that other big name providers such as Comcast will likely not be able to participate in releasing their own version, leaving people to either go without, or forcibly switch over to AT&T for their service providing. Perhaps Sony will work out a deal with another player?
Source: Engadget
So far this Christmas season is looking to be quite lively in the console world if your name doesn’t have ‘end’ in it. I’ll be making my console sales predictions at the end of the month. You may want to stay tuned.
~W75
