Holy crap they sold 8 million Kinects in 2 months and he's questioning if they are happy? They originally thought they were only going to sell 3 million, then they bumped it up to 5 million just before launch, but ended up selling 8 million.

Microsoft has turned the Xbox 360 into a credible casual gaming platform. It is the only video game system in the world that effectively caters to both casual and hardcore gamers now. $500 million is nothing to break into this market. Just think about how much money Microsoft is going to make off of casual gamers every holiday season from now on. Do you have any idea how many times Microsoft has tried since 2001 to open up the Xbox audience beyond just the young male hardcore gamer. They at one point were funding cartoons in both America and Japan (VP & Blue Dragon). To finally have little kids, moms, and girls playing Xbox is an incredible victory. They've broken through the Nintendo wall after a decade of trying. They are not only competitive with Wii, they are beating Wii on a monthly basis.

Wow you are jumping the gun, Kinect sold well on release with massive amounts of hype and advertisement (and more then a few lies *cough* milo *cough*) not to mention the holiday boost, and kinect has been dropping quite drastically since, it is going down every single week and no end to it in sight, MS has a foothole but it looks like they are going to slip 

I guess we will fi d out, when E3 rolls around and we get to see what titles we can expect this year, and into the next...btw...didn't M$ post the most PROFIT this past quarter that saw Kinect's release...hmmm...

can't believe I read all of that before seeing the source was Malstrom. Thanks very much, I've been robbed of a small portion of my life and I want it back please!

Sorry, no devolutions.

tl;dr, also, first sentence pretty much shows the nature of this article, nothing but the ramblings of a butthurt fanboy, if this was in any way a logical analysis I'd take my hat off, but this argument is just a load of shit, to put it frankly.

It amazes me how stupid hardcore gamers have been about Kinect every step of the way, completely not understanding the market or what is happening. I've been exactly on the money about Kinect since it was announced. I'm not jumping any gun. I know exactly what is happening and what is going to happen next.

Kinect is dropping because the holiday is over. How silly can you be? Casual games in particular are focused around holiday sales. Look at the Wii sales trends each year.

And I have to respond to this bit:

"NPD January 2010:

Xbox 360- 332,800

NPD January 2011:

Xbox 360- 381,000"

This compares to Wii

NPD January 2010 -- January 2011

466K > 319K

and PS3:

NPD January 2010 -- January 2011

277K > 267K

The US economy is in very bad shape. The entire game industry is down and yet Xbox 360 sales are increasing. Nobody's sales should be increasing in 2011. And this is despite the fact that Microsoft is having supply issues and gave guidance on these problems a month ago at CES. Without Kinect Xbox 360 sales numbers would be at least 100K lower this month and Wii at least 30K higher.

This is a software driven business and when the next generation of Kinect games hit holiday 2011 you will see yet another signicant rise in hardware sales that never would have been possible for Xbox 360 without Kinect.

To answer simply, no the boost is not an illusion Malstrom, you are reading the numbers correctly, almost 200,000 more 360's sold in the latest week update on this site.  Kinect adventures is looking like it'll easily reach 10,000,000 lifetime sales this year. :)  Great marketing plus great product = great sales. :)

it's halfway through feburary and it's sales are still droping even after everything else has stablized, Kinect gave 360 a hardware boost no doubt my point is it's not going to last there's nothing to keep it from droping, the hype will be long over before the next holiday season comes around and by that time people will realize kinect doesn't have as much potential as they were led to believe 

10 million by the end of this year is only 2 million this year which is a massive drop from the 2 months it was out last year and kinect isn't a great product