Microsoft has made it very clear that they regard Kinect for Xbox 360 as something akin to a new platform launch. Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer is so bullish on the device, he’s expecting it to blow by early estimates.
“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, said Spencer. 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. We are investing in this like we’ve never invested in a platform launch.”
“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, continued Spencer. 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.'”
“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, he concluded.
Source: Edge
