To OP, i see what you mean and yes i agree with you. The fact of "online retailers are selling out" serves as support to claim Kinect is selling well. But what others have mentioned is we don't know how much. That is also true. We don't know actual numbers. In addition we can't assume that just because it is sold out online we can say demand is exceeding supply. This same concept thread can be made for the Move.

You have a safe assumption and i partially agree with you but you can't force your opinion on others. Some do troll but you have to accept skepticism until actual numbers are released.

That's not really true at all.  Looking at the cost of Kinect, it is hard to ever see a profit being made off of it...however, a profit could probably be made off of a future device based on it.  With the PS3, I can guarantee they are still hoping to make a profit on it in the long run, and it still looks very possible.  If Sony sells 50 million more PS3's, and makes an average of $25 on each, that will be $1.25 billion of profit, not to mention more profit being made on games that are already out and games that will continue to come out.  With what I've heard, they are also making massive profits on Move.

That's not the point of the article though...the article is about kinect selling out, and it is pretty sweet that an accessory like this is able to become such a hit.

The key thing is that even if microsoft sells millions of units its not necessarily a success..... what i mean is that they didnt spend half a billion $ to sell 5mil units. they want this device to sell xboxes and increase their userbase so that sony cant catch up.

the key for microsoft is to tap into the wii market, thats who they want and if kinect dosent sell to them its not been a complete success imo. so even if it sells out everywhere and sells 10 mil, if they cant propell their userbase beyond the reach of sony, then it has not been a complete success imo. (just my opinion, no one get upset).

MS has already stated they make a profit on the Kinect hardware so what are you referring to?

I think he means he doesn't think the profit made off kinect will offset the total costs of making it.  Although i'm not sure what the total costs are, nor the actual profit made off each kinect sensor.

Exactly couldn't have said it better myself. I wasn't disagreeing with that, it's just that the OP sounded upset when others disagreed with him.

Sure Kinect is off to a great start. But there are multiple goals. Kinect must push X360's into homes (increase market share) and most importantly cover all costs and profit. It's quite obvious they profit from selling a unit but i believe production costs will/have reached atleast 500m(advertisements). So yes Kinect must sell much more than just a big opening, and signs point to it will. Sure 1m,2m or 3m is a great start but far from justifying it a success in a business/market perspective. Signs point to a great opening and we can (or cannot) assume it will sell well in the long run, thus covering or not covering total costs.

Hence to be a success it must have a great opening, great holiday sales, maintain good sales in the long run, increases x360 market share, initial costs get covered,  production costs come down, profit per unit increases, and last of all profit overall. (Economies of Scale)

And last of all my own opinion, It will be done.

The first week numbers will provide more information than reports of online vendors running out of intial stock on standalone units. Given the marketing effort and build up, this is to be expected, if not through the holidays, then certainly on the initial shipments.

First week sales will give a pretty decent idea of just what kind of hardware boosts Kinect should bring to the Xbox over the holidays, which is arguably more important than how many kits they can sell to current owners. The business idea behind Kinect is market expansion and brand re-invention. I'm sure everyone is well aware of this.

It's entirely possible that production/shipping priority has been given to Kinect bundles as MS would prefer to sell consoles to new consumers than expansion kits to current owners. This would go a ways in explaining why bundles are readily available online, and kits are not. 

Naturally, MS has not revealed the percentage break downs, but it's entirely possible that upgrade kits represent less than half of the overall Kinect units shipped to retail and scheduled for future shipments.

Agreeable post. If Microsoft can't sell Kinect as the "evolution to the Wii" it has been hoping for, then it isn't successful at reaching the goal it was created for. Whether it can be successful otherwise or not is open to debate, but their final goal is to reel in the "casuals"; I'm sure selling it to hardcore users is certainly not against their wishes, though. Hence the crazy new Suda 51 game . . .

. . . exploding lions and tigers and bears(o mai) in front of an amusement park. Huh.

I was looking forward to a Kinect sales article today. I'm expecting atleast 400k.