8 Million Kinect for Xbox 360 Units Sold in 2 Months

Microsoft is selling its new NUI sensor for Xbox 360 at an incredible pace, with over 133,000 devices shipped every day for the past two months.

In fact, since Kinect for Xbox 360 was introduced on November 4th, 2010, customers have been buying no less than 4 million units per month.

The natural user interface sensor which allows users to control game characters as well as additional console experiences using nothing else but gestures and voice, has been a smash hit for Microsoft.

It’s the only conclusion that can be drawn, seeing how the company was forecasting sales of 5 million units by the end of 2010, and ended up selling 4 million per month.

“Xbox and Kinect are transforming the living room with controller-free entertainment in ways that really no one could imagine.

“Consumers around the world have responded in droves. The Xbox LIVE community continues to grow every day, today reaching a new milestone of 30 million Xbox LIVE members,” Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer noted during his keynote address at the event on January 5th.

But Microsoft managed to surpass its own estimates of Kinect for Xbox 360 sensors’ success. Since the device was introduced in early November, over 8 million Kinect units have been sold worldwide.

Ballmer also shared additional statistics related to the overall success of its console and associated service and online community whose members spend more than one billion hours a month on Xbox LIVE.

“A new member joins Xbox LIVE every two seconds. In addition, Kinect and Xbox LIVE have helped drive consumer demand for the Xbox itself. Xbox 360 has been the No. 1 selling console every month for the last six months here in the United States.

“And sales for the Xbox 360 are now over 50 million units worldwide. As many of you know, we predicted that we would sell about 5 million of these Kinect sensors by the end of the holiday season. We beat that forecast. In the first 60 days we sold over 8 million Kinect sensors worldwide.

“This has been the biggest holiday and the biggest year ever for Xbox,” Ballmer added.