8 Million Kinect for Xbox 360 Units Sold in 60 Days

The last two months of 2010 belonged to Kinect. In its first 60 days on the market, 8 million Kinect sensors were sold, Microsoft announced at 2011 International CES.

“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.

A new experience called Avatar Kinect will bring a player’s avatar to life in a whole new way, using facial recognition technology to let a person not only control their avatar’s movements but also their expressions; when they smile, frown, nod and speak, the avatar will do the same.

“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.