Sony's PlayStation Move motion-sensing controller for PlayStation 3 outsold Microsoft's Xbox 360 Kinect sensor by nearly two-to-one in Japan in 2010, according to Media Create.
In the region, the Move sold 170,000 units last year, compared to the Kinect, which sold 90,000 units in Japan, the tracking firm said in a blog post translated by Andriasang (both figures include bundles). The Move launched in October last year in Japan, while the Kinect launched in November.
On a weekly basis in Japan, the PS3 regularly outsells the Xbox 360, which has a smaller overall install base in the region, resulting in a smaller addressable market for add-ons like the Kinect.
Sony said in November last year that its Move had shipped 4.1 million units worldwide in the device's first two months of availability. More recently, Microsoft said it had sold 10 million Kinects globally through the end of February.
The Media Create report also said the PS3's Torne digital video recorder add-on sold 784,000 units in Japan last year from its March 2010 debut. Nintendo's red March 25th anniversary Wii -- released in November -- sold over 97,000 units last year.
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Would give an indication of take-up due to the motion controller being present.
Weekly_Japanese_Charts.php
Closer to 15:1 currently. I agree that this seems to reflect poorly on Move for Sony, though clearly Kinect doesn't seem to be be positively impacting console sales in Japan.
PS3: 6.51 million
X360: 1.48 million
As such, Martin is pretty much spot on: the X360 install base may be much smaller, but a higher percentage of X360 owners have gone out to buy the Kinect, as compared to PS3 owners buying Move (approx. 5% of X360 owners, vs 2.4% of PS3 owners).
In fact, given that you have to buy multiple Move controllers for multiplayer (whereas Kinect supports 4 players out of the box), the situation may be even worse for Sony. For instance, if a third of Move owners have bought two controllers, that would mean that there's only around 135,000 Move installs in the country...
I'm not inciting anything, but I find it interesting the 360 seems to be the exception to the rule (especially with Sony's bad press lately).
BUT, the main purpose of these add-ons is to boost the install bases of the underlying platform. Selling the add-on to existing customers was always secondary. Their sales need to be looked at with this in mind.
So with this information you could say that Microsoft failed to expand its install base enough to gain significant platform market share over Sony (never mind Nintendo) in Japan.
On the other hand, how many of these are sales to male PC owners who just want to be pretty pretty Miku princesses on their PC?