Examiner

Earlier we reported that Microsoft had announced that Kinect had surpassed an impressive 8 million units sold in the two months since it launched.  Some may wonder if this is the classic "shipped vs sold" argument but Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg put that question to rest.

In response to a Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski asking if the 8 million number was shipped or sold, Greenburg said via Twitter that, "We have no channel inventory, so essentially the same #....every Kinect we make we sell."

At the end of February, Sony reported that they had shipped 4.1 million Playstation Move units to retail stores.  An impressive number for the PS3 motion controller but that doesn't give us a clear picture of how many Moves are actually in homes around the world.  Sony did not release any Move sales information today as part of their CES presentation.

With NPD now being more selective about sales numbers we have to depend on the console manufacturers to release sales information on accessories or industry analysts to share that information with us.

Update: Bloomber Tech Report Dina Bass got a clarification on the numbers from Microsoft by tweeting that, "Microsoft has clarified to me that the 8 million KInect number is sell in, or how many were shipped to retailers. Not sell thru."  Microsoft told her that it "far surpassed" the previous 5 million sold thru but wouldn't give exact numbers.  How close Greenberg's "essentially the same #" statement is to reality is currently unclear but Bass points to his statement as evidence that "pretty much all of them have been sold thru."

http://www.examiner.com/console-gaming-in-national/microsoft-every-kinect-we-make-we-sell

Its 7 million to consumer for sure at least.  There ARE NOT 1 million Kinects sitting on store shelves.  Not even close to it.

If Microsoft is saying that sell-thru sales have have surpassed 5 millions than the number is most probably somewhere between 5 and 6 million, which sounds reasonable.

@BenVTrigger: Your impression that there are not one million Kinects sitting on store shelves is because you're probably from the USA, where Kinect is indeed selling very very well. But don't forget that there are 192 other countries in the world where Kinect is not such a big success. Just yesterday for example I was in my country's biggest electronics store chain. Already in front of the store there was a huge Kinect advertisement, about 6x4 meters large. And in the games section, the store had prepared a huge area where people could try out Kinect and there was even some Kinect marketing guy asking customers walking by to give it a try. They even had a big TV-advertised sale where they offered the Kinect bundle for just 122 Euros instead of the official 149 Euros. But it just didn't help: Within the whole 45 minutes that I spent in the games section, there wasn't a single person taking one of the Kinect bundles that were piling up meters high. In the same time however, at least two people bought PS Move PS3 bundles and just like the last three times I was there, the shop didn't have even a single PS Move starter pack or standalone Move controller.

Don't get me wrong, my message is not "Look how bad Kinect and how great PS Move sells"! I only want to demonstrate that anecdotical evidence/personal experience can easily give you a wrong impression when it comes to worldwide sales. While Kinect probably really has a 90% sell-thru rate in the USA, the situation is quite different in other countries.

atleast now people would stopped with the sell-in vs sell thru fights

Sadly, I went to the same store mere minutes later and somehow all the kinects sold and people returned the move controllers.  Sigh..... :P

I liked the stacked meters high part.  That one really kicks the dog.

I've never known Greenberg to exaggerate in the past

Well it probably only takes 5 Kinect boxes stacked lengthwise to make a 2 metre high tower. So doen't necessarily mean 30 Kinects sitting unsold...

...I suppose they could be empty Kinect boxes for display purposes too, but I like the thought of real Kinects stacked in a precariously tall narrow fashion.

Give me a break....

Nobody can deny the evidence. Kinect is by far the fastest selling accessory in the whole gaming history. Congratulations Microsoft and XBOX 360!!!

I'm hoping someone else can confirm this but I don't believe the reported sell-in numbers are counted once retailers receive them, but from when they're removed from the warehouse to shipping containers.  So there could be a lot in transit on their way to retailers across the world.