Major Nelson: Kinect Sold 2.5 million in first 25 days

[OntheEdgeofthemirror]

heruamon said:

OntheEdgeofthemirror said:

heruamon said:

OntheEdgeofthemirror said:

One thing always bothers me when MS or any major company releases sold to consumer numbers, how the hell do they know exactly how much every single retailer has sold world wide, bottom line they don't they are either guessing or releasing shipped numbers when it's close to being sold out because they can get away with it 

It's not that hard, if you REALLY want to get the number, which I'm sure M$ wanted.  They upped their estimates, so they probably notified retailer to report all sales to them...why would it be difficult?  Walmart, for example, tracks EVERYTHING...which is why they were so good.  Now, if M$ wanted numbers for everything they sell, retialer might have a gripe with that...but notice that they report OVER 2.5, which accounts for the variance...

because kinect ships to 60,000 retailers in like 300 countries thats why it's difficult, it's not 10 phones calls, and I'm sure not all of them disclose their numbers 

If you started, WITH the intent to track sales, it's not that hard of a problem, but why would you...evidently, M$ wanted to be able to do so.  They don't need to track every sale, just the major batches from major retailers, since they aren't telling you, 2,524,234 kinect units sold...based on the order of magnitude, it is not that hard.  I'm sure all the major retailing outlet in most of Europe and North America can provide the data to M$.  As to why would they do so...maybe because M$ paid them to provide the data...afterall...they did budget $500 million to the launch EFFORT.

Again we are back to the fact thats it's just an estimate and we have no idea how accurate it is assuming it is even that rather then just claiming shiped are sold because they seem sold out in most places