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Published in Gaming

Kinect selling well, as expected

by on08 November 2010
microsoft

A number of retailers report launch sellout
Despite all of the talk about inventory problems for the Kinect launch, retailers that received Kinect product to sell are reporting excellent sales. In fact, many retailers in the U.S. have sold out of their initial shipments and are eager to get additional units to sell from Microsoft.

While the initial inventory for launch in North America is not totally sold out at every retailer, the majority of them are sold out for the time being. While a number of big box retailers are confirming that their online stores have no units to sell, these retailers claim that there still might be a few units for sale left at retail brick and mortar locations.

Right now, the individual add-on Kinect units are more difficult to find than the Kinect Xbox 360 console bundles. It would appear that those are at least a little easier to find, but not in as high demand because, at least in the initial sales push, users that already have consoles seem to be the ones most eager to lay their hands on Kinect.

As to when retailers can expect more units, that is currently an unknown at this point. According our sources, retailers are asking for more product, but it is unknown when Microsoft can deliver more product. We are told to expect another big surge of product available in North America before Black Friday, which is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. So far, it does not appear that the availability of Kinect titles is a problem with retailers that we have spoken with, as they claim that they have enough Kinect titles to sell.

Some analysts believe that Microsoft might be strategically holding onto inventory and letting it ship out a little at a time to increase word of mouth and drive the hype factor up to increase sales. While the company isn’t confirming that this is the case, we have seen this type of strategy before from video game companies, so it would not be unheard of for them to do this. In the meantime, Kinect does appear to be off to a good start; and it really now comes down to Microsoft’s to having enough units to sell if they want to make their new sales target of 5 million sold before the end of the year.

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