14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is extremely confident in its new Kinect system, that will be launched soon for the Xbox 360, and has revealed that the launch of Kinect will be the biggest one in the history of gaming, surpassing the one of the PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii or even Microsoft's own Xbox 360.
Microsoft is getting ready to launch the Kinect system for the Xbox 360 console, a technology that will allow it to detect human body motions and pretty much eliminate the need for a standard controller when playing games or interacting with the Xbox 360.
As you can imagine, the American company is quite proud of its new system, and the boss of Microsoft studios, Phil Spencer, has already started hyping up the new system, set to arrive in November.
According to Spencer, the launch of Kinect will be "the biggest console launch ever."
"We are investing in this like we've never invested in a platform launch," he revealed. "This is, for us, the biggest platform launch in the history of the industry.
"We'll have a huge launch portfolio, we want to sell more units than any console has ever sold in its first holiday, a new platform. Our retail partners are telling us, based on the consumer demand, "this is going to be the number one consumer electronics purchase this holiday. Not just in the games space, all of them."
This is pretty hard to believe, especially since Kinect will be priced at a pretty steep $150 dollars, near the actual tag of a Nintendo Wii and much higher than the one of the PlayStation Move motion detection technology that was already launched for the Xbox 360's Arch rival, the PlayStation 3
"In North America 7,000 retailers are doing midnight events when we ship and our pre-order momentum looks huge. So this, for us, is bigger than Xbox launch, bigger than 360 launch - this is a big deal for us. How many units are we going to sell? We're completely goaled in investing as if this were the biggest console launch ever, and that's our expectation."
Spencer is still retaining a bit of realism, and revealed that the 3 million holiday mark set by his boss, Don Mattrick, might be hard to achieve, as plenty of things need to go exactly right.
"You forecast, you hope, you do your best, right? You ship something. I know my manager, Don Mattrick, was quoted saying a holiday target of over 3 million.
"I think about it in a bigger way than that. Not that Don's wrong; that's the number that he stated, but a lot has to happen in order for us to have success. Our content partners have to ship great games, our retail partners have to be there with us, our marketing has to be there in a very impactful way."
So, do you share Spencer's enthusiasm regarding Kinect or is he a bit too confident in the new system?