As PlayStation Move sales reportedly close in on Kinect's, Ubisoft has suggested Microsoft should rethink its motion control software release strategy.

Kinect sold an average of 133,333 units per day - a total of eight million units - in its first 60 days on shelves, between November 4, 2010 and January 3, 2011, and went on to hit ten million sales in March.
While Kinect's current sales total is unclear - IndustryGamers reckons it has yet to hit 11 million units, which seems a little hard to believe - what is apparent is that adoption has stalled since last year's holiday period. Meanwhile, Sony's Move may have been slower out of the gate, but it recently reached the nine million sales mark, according to the site.

Ubisoft VP of marketing Tony Key suggested the Kinect sales pattern is unhealthy for the wider industry, and urged Microsoft to offer better year-round support for the platform.

"It's not healthy to just sell in the holiday, or 90 percent of your units in the holidays," he said. "We would really like to see them have some major launches during the non-holiday part of the year.

"That will help keep the visibility of the machine high and enable better catalogue sales throughout the year, and also give us the opportunity to launch some things throughout the year.

"We put out Michael Jackson: The Experience in April and we would love to continue to have Kinect games come out all year long," Key added, "but we need support from first-party [Microsoft] also on that front."

Microsoft is clearly gearing up for strong Kinect sales again this Christmas, having launched Dance Central 2 and Kinect Sports 2 last month, and Kinect Disneyland adventures a few weeks ago.

Posted: Nov 24, 2011 1:43 pm

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/327350/kinect-sales-pattern-unhealthy-ubisoft/