I've seen quite a bit outside of NFL games too. They aren't holding back on buying advertising IMO.

I was referring to the cost between the Football commercial and the Kinect cameo on Entourage, not to mention them advertising as far back as February with the then named "Project Natal" making an appearance on SmallVille.

It is clear that one is spending much more than the other when it comes to advertisements. The whole Kinect Tour thing that started right after E3 shows as much and they are still advertising it all over while still being 1 1/2 months away.

Given the above talk about Kinect sales/marketing. From what I can figure they probably won't make any money on Kinect even if they sell to their projections of 3M or more by the end of the year. The marketing expenditure is massive, from what I can recall it was over 50M in additional marketing expenditure in the last quarter alone and most of that was Kinect related.

Anyway back to Move.

I don't think early sales matter so much whether they are large, medium or small in the short run. Over the longer term it does matter significantly more and as always their actions IMO are setting themselves up for 2011 rather than a strong finish to 2010. They need positive word of mouth moreso than Microsoft or Nintendo at this point. This is the reason why they priced their accessory to sell to current PS3 owners whereas Microsoft positioned Kinect best with new Xbox 360 owners with their $299 bundle.

I called around very many retailers that I considered within reasonable driving distance (about an hour each way) yesterday and though a few places had 1 or 2 left they were all on hold for staff. So I couldn't get one. As is mentioned by others on here though I havbe no idea of initial shipment size but the fact that everyone has sold out would seem to bode well for sales, Next shipment is apparently due monday.

Funny.

Pepole with MS stats in their sig show negative ancedotal evidence.

Pepole with PSN stats show positive evidence.

I say wait for ioi :)

Another problem with Move for retailers is there is so much sh*t that needs to be ordered. Unlike the Wii Motion Plus or Kinect which only have a couple SKUs, the Move requires multiple SKUs to be ordered on the part of the retailer. They have to not only order the kits, but also controllers, sub-controllers and bundles. Plus it's difficult to anticipate the demand for each of those SKUs. So I can see why they would be conservative in ordering.

The sub-con is used in Heavy Rain (still need to move your character around).

As far as the initial launch titles (the $40 Move exclusive ones), I don't think any of them use it.

I played with a DS3 and Move and have to say, while the sub-con is more comfortable for one-handed use, a lot of the backlash against the DS3/Move set up was pretty much an overreaction. It works fine.

I'm going to pick up a copy of RE5 Gold later this month. It's probably the best suited game for the sub-con/Move set up.

I just went through most of the initial demos (Sports Champions, Racket Sports, Eye Pet, Kung Fu Rider) and have to say that I won't be spending $40 on any of those. They're not horrible per se, but unless you really want to use your new controllers for more than just control patches on back catalog games, none of them were terribly compelling titles. Sports Champions and Racket Sports are decent party games and Eye Pet naturally is custom tailored for small children.

I would imagine a lot of retailers order the Move and sub-con like regular DS3 controllers, which means they'll probably be running in and out of stock during the initial run of Move until sales normalize.

It's really no different from ordering Wii controller/Nunchuck/Motion Plus SKUs.

PSEye orders were probably left the same, with Move Starter Packs likely being ordered similarly to standalone games without peripherals needed to play.

It'll be interesting to see how the Move/320GB bundles sell although it seems unlikely that retailers ordered them in numbers any higher than the regular 160/320GB SKUs.

I don't think MS is selling Kinect peripherals at anything even approaching a loss. I know there's been quite a bit of talk from them as to how much they cost to produce, but my gut tells me they would actually be making a pretty tidy profit on each unit sold were it not for averaged per unit marketing costs, which as you've pointed out have been pretty huge.

I can't think of anything that any game company has promoted so heavily with special preview events, etc. since Wii Fit. And Kinect promotional efforts have easily outstripped what Nintendo spend promoting Wii Fit so far.

It's going to be a very slow weekend for all reatil in North America, because of Yom Kippur which  begins on the 17th and ends on the 19th. In the mall i work some Jewish holidays tend to be slow.