Sony Shifts Over a Million Moves in Europe

[Logan Westbrook]

Sony Shifts Over a Million Moves in Europe

Sales for Sony's new motion controller are actually much higher than predicted, says Sony Europe boss Andrew House.

Some core gamers are quick to dismiss motion controllers as gimmicks doomed to an embarrassing and ignoble end. But in defiance of a lot of expectations, including its own, Sony has sold around 1.5 million units of its new motion controller Move [http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-Move-Starter-Bundle-3/dp/B002I0J4NE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287136964&sr=8-1], since its launch last month in Europe alone.

Sony had previously been cautious [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103353-Sony-Says-Move-is-Not-Necessarily-a-Pre-Order-Product] about Move's early sales, saying that it wasn't a "pre-order product" and that getting a massive first month wasn't really the focus. Speaking with business site Bloomberg [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-14/sony-sees-strong-europe-christmas-sales-says-ps3-may-beat-its-targets.html], House said that sales for Move had actually taken Sony by surprise, being much higher than it had projected, and would probably result in the company upping production.

Sony's marketing strategy for Move was fairly low key, although Sony Worldwide Studio's boss Shuhei Yoshida did admit last month that having Kinect [http://www.amazon.com/Kinect-Sensor-Adventures-Xbox-360/dp/B002BSA298/ref=sr_1_1?s=videogames&ie=UTF8&qid=1287137837&sr=1-1] to compare against made the job of marketing Move easier [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103616-Sony-Claims-Kinect-Helped-Market-Move]. We'll got a couple of months to wait until we'll know if Microsoft has done similarly well with Kinect, but it's marketing spend is much higher and retailers reporting [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/104336-UK-Retailer-Runs-Down-Kinect-Reserves] that they have more pre-orders than they have first day stock would seem to be a good sign.

Source: via CVG [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=269861?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=CVG-News-RSS]


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[Fredrikorex]

If they ever make a GOOD GAME with the move then I will buy it.

 

[Autofaux]

Hahah...

I'm not laughing. I'm shielding my congratulations in a snicker.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Sad.


REALLY NSFW

 

[Keava]

One of the cellphone operators in Poland recently tries to stuff a PS3 + Move down people's throat offering it in a bundle with a subscription for a cellphone for about 120$ (+20$/month for the phone service). Still not willing to buy it tho. I like my PC, thank you.

 

[mad825]

so there are around 16m units in Europe and yet only around 1/16 have move?

congratz, Sony?

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Sad.


REALLY NSFW

(Dies from lughing to hard)

 

[Shadowsole]

... if that was a real bow that kid would take out his eye...

and he wouldn't even hit anything.

 

[tehroc]

When I originally read the thread title I thought, great Sony just outsourced 1000000 jobs to Europe...

 

[Jumplion]

If they ever make a GOOD GAME with the move then I will buy it.

Take your pick. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_compatible_with_PlayStation_Move]

OT: Good for Sony, the Move does look like an interesting piece of technology. Most likely I won't buy it until some more interesting titles pop up (Killzone 3, LBP2, etc...), but for now I'm fairly impressed with it's sales.

Now we just have to see Kinect's numbers...I'm conflicted with feeling hope for it to succeed and hope for it to fail as the Kinect itself is a very interesting piece of technology but Microsoft have no idea what they're doing with it.

 

[Pingieking]

so there are around 16m units in Europe and yet only around 1/16 have move?

congratz, Sony?

In Sony's defense, that's still a pretty darn good attachment rate one month after release. Especially for something that most people thought would die upon release. Not saying that it won't die, just that it hasn't died yet.

Go Sony, I guess. Now lets see some decent software to go with that decent hardware.

 

[SpaceMedarotterX]

If they ever make a GOOD GAME with the move then I will buy it.

Take your pick. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_compatible_with_PlayStation_Move]

OT: Good for Sony, the Move does look like an interesting piece of technology. Most likely I won't buy it until some more interesting titles pop up (Killzone 3, LBP2, etc...), but for now I'm fairly impressed with it's sales.

Now we just have to see Kinect's numbers...I'm conflicted with feeling hope for it to succeed and hope for it to fail as the Kinect itself is a very interesting piece of technology but Microsoft have no idea what they're doing with it.

I want the Kinect to fail simply because of how much Microsoft has been hyping it up (because of the whole 'haven't got another leg to stand on' problem with the 360's future) I mean I wouldn't have had a problem but when they said "Greatest Launch Ever" all I wanted them to do wasdie in a fire.

On topic, it kinda shocks me, I expected it to pull half that honestly

 

[Korten12]

Wow, 1.5 million, thats pretty good.

 

[Unrulyhandbag]

Sad.


REALLY NSFW

Except the move works, certainly better than anything the competition has put out.
Some of the games are flaky but so long as the people making the games do their job properly it's seems to deliver direct full range controls with very little delay.

People are buying now so that when something good does come out then they won't have to spend a fortune all at once, or maybe they like like the games already about.

Dunno, maybe they just have a lot more faith in the industry than you. Fact is move isn't a failure yet.

 

[dnadns]

Good news to me. That means that more quality titles will show up soon (hopefully).
Can't see anything bad about that.

Let's just hope that Sony manages to keep the shovelware at bay.

 

[Sebenko]

I don't care if it sells 7 billion, I will not change my mind about motion controls.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Dunno, maybe they just have a lot more faith in the industry than you. Fact is move isn't a failure yet.

Faith in the industry?

I didn't think we'd made the move into industry being a religion yet.

It's a tool made by a business. That's all. If people are already applying "Hope" and "Faith" to it, then I think people need to look closely at their priorities.

I mean, I like Doctor Who, but I'm still not going to pre-order episodes.

 

[icyneesan]

Good for sony, maybe they can use the profits to invest in some more games for the move

 

[sooperman]

A million and a half units in a month isn't anything to sneeze at, but I don't think Move has planted itself into the market yet. Sony looks like it has a lead against Kinect, though.

Off-topic: It would be sweet if we would project images in three dimensions to create illusions like the bow in the picture. Could you imagine playing the Wii and having a proper gun materialize in your hands?

 

[mjc0961]

Really?!

Can... Can someone help me get my jaw up off the floor? Damn. I never expected it to do this well yet.