Microsoft expects 5 million Kinects sold in 2010
The company's new forecast for sales this year is a whopping 2 million units over the 3 million projected earlier.
Microsoft expects to sell 5 million Kinect units by the end of 2010, the company confirmed to CNET today.
"The demand for Kinect for Xbox 360 is exceeding expectations," a Microsoft spokesperson wrote in an e-mail. "So we're increasing our forecast from 3 million sensors sold this holiday to 5 million. That's bigger than any launch in Xbox history."
Bloomberg reporter Dina Bass first made mention of the increase in projected Kinect sales on her Twitter account earlier today.
If Kinect can tally 5 million unit sales, it would be quite a feat.
During the first month of its availability, Sony's PlayStation Move, which launched in September in the U.S., tallied 1 million unit shipments. Since Microsoft is launching the Kinect tomorrow, it gives the company less than two months to reach its milestone. If it does, the Kinect's launch could easily outpace the Move's.
That said, Kinect has a long way to go if it wants to catch up to Nintendo's Wii Remote. Nintendo says it has sold more than 65.3 million controllers since the Wii's launch in 2006.