PlayStation Move - Preliminary Sales Figures In - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 20 September 2010 / 45,206 Views
Sony launched the PlayStation Move last week and as ever, VGChartz is here first to bring you the preliminary sales figures.
To start with, it is important to define what we mean by a unit of Move hardware - essentially a Move Controller plus PlayStation Eye Camera. Since there are so many different SKUs and configurations (Starter Bundle, controller and camera seperately, purchasing a second controller, existing camera users) we have to make some assumptions when estimating the amount of complete Move hardware in houses.
Starting with the Americas - the Sports Champions bundle sold around 50,000 units last week, each one counting as a new piece of Move hardware. Of this, around 10,000 units were bundled with PS3 hardware. Now the tricky bit, as well as the Sports Champion bundle, around 35,000 Move Controllers were also sold. Of these, we estimate that around 25% are for consumers who already own a PlayStation Eye Camera and the remainder are as a second controller. Therefore in total, around 60,000 units of Move hardware were sold in the Americas last week.
Moving on to Europe and there is no Sports Champions bundle as in the Americas, but there is a Starter Pack which includes the Camera and Move Controller. Around 70,000 Starter Packs were sold last week in Europe along with a further 30,000 Move Controllers. Assuming a similar 25% of Move Controller purchases are for users with an existing camera, around 80,000 units of Move hardware were sold last week in Europe taking the worldwide total to around 140,000 units as of September 18th with around 100,000 copies of Sports Champions also in homes across the world.
So a solid start for Sony, who has spent very little to date marketing PlayStation Move and I share Sony's view that Move will be much more of a slow-burn when compared to Microsoft's Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware at first glance getting far more press coverage and supported by a significantly larger marketing budget. As more Move-exclusive titles arrive, especially from Sony, we expect the hardware to really pick up pace into 2011 / 2012. As is always the case, the success of a new piece of hardware is heavily dependant on the software so the next 12 months will be crucial for both Move and Kinect.
Keep checking back on VGChartz in the coming weeks and months as we bring more news on the performance of PlayStation Move and Kinect.
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It's a good start considering it's not been as hyped or marketed as much as kinect, in the end lots of people are waiting for more games for it before they jump on the bandwagon, I think move will have long legs as it has lots of core games coming up this will keep people interested in it and it should be around 1 million by the end of october, hopefully
Who really cares how many "complete" Moves were sold. Playstation Eye, Move, and games should all be listed exclusively, just like every other accessory.
I'm putting my 2 cents that it's not a flop but not a resounding success either!!!
So where's the proof that Kinect has almost 1 million in pre-orders?
Those numbers are terrible and if Sony didn't make enough MOVE for their launch, that's even sadder. They obviously didn't think it was going to sell that great either. I predicted it would sell 1-1.5 million by the end of the year, but my prediction may be too high. I predicted the Kinect would sell just over 3 million units by the end of the year. At least Kinect has almost 1 million in pre-orders. Looks like Sony will be last again in the motion-sensor hardware race.
@nickvasko: The launch will be big (in US, UK and AUS), but there won't be any good games coming out for it.
Even Milo is cancelled. Maybe if they make the camera a bit better ...
What? That WAS the original plan? But they cancelled that as well?
I said it before, but here it comes again:
Natal wowed people, Kinect let them down.
With Natal, the possibilities seemed endless. MS showed impressive things, made grand promises. Maybe it's our own fault for letting our imaginations run wild, but since E3 '09, all MS have done is scale back what Natal could do. They've delivered what feels like a gimped version of the original concept.
Every major Kinect announcement was about what was removed, what was delayed, what it couldn't do yet -- all accompanied with more "you ain't seen nothin' yet" assurances and vague talk of potential, potential, potential, with hardly a worthwhile game to back it up.
Gamers laugh at Kinect, not because it's popular, but because it's not Natal. It's not the product they were promised.
xbox is gonna kick our asses with kinect, i can jus see it coming
Ah well ... these numbers are still vague, where the Kinect numbers will be solid.
Just some extra ammo for the xbots, they just won't understand (or admit) that the Move-numbers aren't accurate.
I think some companies did underestimate demand here in Aus. I've seen the stand alone controllers and sports champions sold out in places but available in others. As for marketing, there are rolling demonstrations in major shopping centres around the country. Haven't seen any ads but I don't watch TV either :)
It indeed seems to be have been understocked.
The Motion controller alone for example has been out of stock on my country's Amazon already since two weeks before launch. And right now my country's Amazon has run out of stock on all main products: Motion controllers, Starter Packs and even Sports Champions. And I've read quite a couple of postings from people who tried to buy it in local shops but it was already sold out.
@ Liquiduval
It was more of an understock issue rather than demand..There was a news article about it..
I'm in New Zealand and I couldn't afford the move at lauch so i thought i'll wait for pay day. Today is pay day and i've spent 3 hours driving to find that everywhere is sold out.... NOOO!! even online at "the warehouse" (new zealands Walmart) it's sold out. Of course we're not the biggest country but there is diffinately a demand (here at least). I really did think that I was safe to buy it later. guessing it may be the usual strategy of creating a false demand by making it seem hard to get (. I worked at a game store and found this was the norm for certain items ie, wii fit....wiis)
theres no need to excuse these #s, they are respectable considering that Its only day one for US and the MOVE hasnt even released in Japan, where the PS3 is most popular. Let it release worldwide first before we call anything a failure
@ Zechs. I think you identified half of the problem. Yes, there are PS fanboys who are defending/excusing these numbers when those particular fanboys really think it's bad. But then you have your Wii/360 fanboys using these numbers as fanboy ammo. Any gamer can tell you it's ultimately about the games and not about the numbers, and yes, this is primarily a sales chart site. And whether someone thinks the number are good or bad should be mature about it. Anyone else should be damned for letting their fanboy hatred cloud the bigger picture.
I've followed VGChartz for a long time and this is my first post. The reason I come to this site is because I love industry analysis and sales figures, I find it bizarre that anyone would come to VGChartz and says things like: 'let's talk about the games - not just numbers'. Sales numbers and industry analysis is what this place is all about!!! If you want to talk about the games and forget the figures there are loads of other places you can do that. If people don't like it when a game or product sells worse than expected that's just tough really! It's not like a review that can be an opinion, it's a fact - and facts are things we have to live with!
@nnn2004 yes it's a good start but only a start, the real test for the Move is whether or not it can sell past the fanboy audience of the PS3. Yes there will be more software support for Move than Kinect; however most of those support will come at an expense of being lazy Wii ports. Kinect however will have games built from the ground up ie Children of Eden that will take gamers in a more immersive experience thus continuing it's growth. I already have a Wii, Move needs to prove that it can provide me an experience more than a marginally and questionably more accurate Wii with HD graphics in order for me to jump into the system!!!
i think its good start .. it will not be good as kinect start but i think its will get more software support than kinect and that will help move later.
@oni-link I couldnt agree more, I actually had to look around for just a controller but everyone had the bundles. I think the advertisment for Kinect and Wii is bigger (although I wil admit I dont watch MTV or G4 or TV at all, so ill take your word for that). I hate to say but I dont see alot of new adopters either.
"So a solid start for Sony, who has spent very little to date marketing PlayStation Move"
Solid start for the Move (though Kinect will blow those #'s out of the water) but Sony did market this quite a bit. Every Gamestop and Electronic store had kiosks (w/pamphlets) and huge posters showcasing the Move. In addition to numerous TV ads (seems like there is one every commercial at MTV, G4 channel, etc ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7hvuv_jn3U ; the gaming press had numerous articles showcasing the Move as well as Sony marketing the product during big gaming events like E3, TGS, etc. Still I wonder and a bit skeptical on how the Move will bring in "NEW" players as it only seems to sold only to Sony fans in general when looking at the sold out status of the controllers and starter packs but having an abundunt of PS3 Move bundles gathering dust in places like Target, Fry's and Walmart.
Your ratio of "25% of Move Controller purchases are for users with an existing camera in Europe" must be wrong, because you are forgeting the 500000 copys of Eye Pet with Cameras alredy sold in Europe.
So you have to assume that the ratio in Europe as to be much higher, I think between 75% to 85%
@ ioi
what do you think?
If your counting the Move controller sales by itself (which I dont know why the hell you wouldnt, its not like there are people out there who had no camera prior) then these #s are not that bad
saw 2 PSMOVE Ads on german tv today. 0o .. now it starts.. a bit late, but okay.
Wii, o no sorry... Move is doomed....
@ ioi well i said its same for move these r just upgraded devices not innovative :/
i wasnt criticizing though :/
kinect = just upgraded pseye/eyetoy ,move= upgraded wii motion plus plus wii mote
"Microsoft's Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware"
"Microsoft's Kinect which is doubtedly a more uninnovative piece of hardware"
fixed same 4 move
damn, the eyetoy is nowhere near as advanced as kinect though.
is this the opening day sales or weekly?
ioi. Cool, thank you. You are correct. Your adjusted number that gives "Move hardware" is most important or else it will be hard to compare sales to Kinect. But I hope you will also keep providing the raw number of standalone Move sales in the future (the 140K).
"Microsoft's Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware"
Very objective. The undoubtedly way less innovative piece of hardware from 2003 known as Eyetoy says "hi".
PS3is domed!!!
I have no idea wether these numbers are good or not. If it has sales trends similar to your average PS3 game, then it flopped. if it has sales trends similar to a standard console, then it should do very well.
shutting up until we get more data
@ ioi: No matter how you try to calculate, it just can't be accurate.
Lot's of people just bought a Move controller, because they already had the camera.
Most of those people are playing demo's atm and will get Move-games when the good games arrive.
So you can't be accurate counting just the camera's, the controllers or the games.
I know it's hard but maybe it's better just to talk about the games. ;)
Concerning the Kinect part in the newspost: It would be better if you hadn't post that, because this website is getting a lot of comment on things like that.
To stay objective it's better to stick with the topic. :)
No Wii-owner is interested in newspost with (pro)360 or (pro)PS3-news in it.
You can switch the names between to any of these 3 places in the sentence above.
People just want to read the news the title says.
Note that, these figures were for last week and was launched on friday.
I must say, it's impressive considering the small marketing budget they had.
@Soriku
4 hours ago
@uso
From Sony themselves as well as multiple members of the site. Seriously there's a ton of threads here on this subject, and Sony reports shipped.
Give me a link, that is not from this forum
I think Move will be implemented into PS3-owners at a slow but strong pace. Most ps3 owners aren't casual gamers, and Move, like the Nintendo Wii, is oriented mostly to familiar, casual games. If Sony succeeds into blending hardcore games with a motion-sensing controller, Sony will have a really good business there.
@julien
US sales are only for a day though
Not so good...Especially in USA ! 60 000 = very poor ! A logic failure of Sony for a great Wiimote-copy, no more...
No, i was hoping, it would be a big failure, but it sells well, i´m out of gaming next gen oO
Nice tracking and analysis. Move sales are in line with what I expected. ioi you should take in Barozi's comment on tracking methodology. Not saying he is right but maybe we want to be able to also know the exact number of controllers sold, apart from a nice adjusted and comparable number visavi Kinect.
@ ioi
Yeah you're right in the technological sense: On Kinect the camera looks for your body, locks onto it, measures the three-dimensional positioning of 48 key joints in your anatomy and ignores everything else.
So you can forget about the annoyances of poor lighting or furniture messing up the image calibration, which is the problem with Sony's PlayStation Eye technology.
Does it matter? Let me say for the last time.. I dont think this Gen will be loving motion control on the Xbox 360 or PS3..
so less than 1% of ps3 user base is buying it? that not too good
@ Miguel_Zorro
Ok First off you're right about the comparing 'lifetime' MW 2 sales.. I was thinking multi-platform first week ( MW2 sold 7 million across all platforms on day 1!! - Including PC ) which was WRONG thinking ..,
Not as seemingly huge here.. but if we compare a week of MW2 sales ( PS3 alone ) to a week of Move you'll still find the percentages are around 12% of PS3 owners bought COD MW2 in week one alone ...(sold 3.5 million in that first week.. so almost half of lifetime MW2 sales on PS3 were that first week) ....
All I was thinking is price can't be a major blamer on underwhelming sales. I dont think Kinect will do any better
Solid start...it will be interesting to see what kind of legs it has, leading into the holiday season.
Not sure what to think of these numbers.. After dividing 140,000 units by the 37.6 million PS3 consoles worldwide, 'less then a third of 1% of all PS3 owners bought into Move' .. It may seem a bit underwhelming for all the hype, and being the 1st week where sales should be most intense for the one week period... Move cost how much ? Maybe the price of a game? ...Yet nearly 25% of all PS3 owners bought COD MW2 a FPS, ... and again less then a third of 1% of owners bought Move... the PS3 ANd Xbox have more then one thing in common.. More hardcore gamers on them ( Compared to the Wii, which is one reason why Will sells so well with the older crowd )
Im partial to Xbox this Gen, but to be honest but Im not sure Kinect will do much better..
If it does I'm going to say statistically ..there are around 6 million more xb360 console owners in the world then PS3's.. so .. if ( yes IF, NOT probably so ) a similar percentile of people initially buy 'Kinect' ..as did.. 'Move'.. then Kinect will push more solely because there are more xb360 owners. The 360 also sells more games which could be a mover for Kinect.
Otherwise, I really beleive, this Gen will NOT embrace motion control .. all the news you read points to Sony AND MS both ending this Gen in about 2 or 3 years tops. Rumors that Sony is burning the midnight oil to make sure there next console is out a bit before Microsofts console is out .. so they dont get caught again being behind..
But I want to see how Kinect differentiates itself ( and if it does ) from the rest of the seemingly 'gimmicky' motion control stuff out there.. If all else fails, maybe all these guys wil have some really good motion sense lined up next Gen ?
If Im wrong you'll see me buying Kinect sometime before this Gen ends..
Around 140k is a pretty good start for Move IMO.
I echo Naraku's sentiments. Seems low to me but we really need to wait for a week of full sales. Also we need to see the ongoing sales. But I did expect a lot more from the sony loyalists (I don't mean that insulting).
no champions bundle in europe sounds a bit silly,why wouldn't they,
will people only just by move and nothing else,just play the demo disc
Considering all the units of PS3 that have been sold in America, this number seems so low. Think about it. It's just a tiny percentage of the owners of the PS3 in America have. But this is just the FIRST week. We have to wait and see what happens beyond this release week.
Target had a whole wall of Playstation Move in stock
Is there any tracking of previous ps eye sales? The eyepet bundle must have moved quite a few in the UK.
A lot of people had a hard time finding a Move controller though. It's was sold out at some places.
I also have 3 keyboards and around 4 mouses here in case you want to start tracking PC sales as well ;-)
You heard it here first Brett.
You should really start tracking only the number of controllers instead of all the necessary equipments.
I for one own 3 360 controllers, 3 PS3 controllers and 1 Wiimote (even though I don't own a Wii) and one nunchuck.
That makes me an owner of 3 360s, 3 PS3s and 2 Wiis
I wonder how it will do in Japan, where both PS3 and motion control are very popular.
TheFlyingDutchman are you joking? Do you really think Microsoft somehow has some say in this 3 paragraph story on vgchartz? Talk about a conspiracy theorist....
So one day of sales in US, 5 days in Europe and 0 in Japan.
That makes 140K a good start.
Too bad VGChartz is probably wrong due to bad calculations.
So obvious that MS is paying to get their name in every Move article.
Too bad to see that even here on a website that should remain objective MS's money can get a grip.
That's really disturbing.
I didn't even know Move was out last week. Reach pretty much over shadowed that debut. Shame too.
@Soriku
1 hour ago
@vgno
"(vgchartz is the only place where ps3 is way under is real numbers : 38,1 since more than 3 months in real life, and sony is giving sold numbers, not shipped like microsoft)"
You'd be surprised how many people said this on this site and were proved WRONG since Sony (as well as MS/Nintendo) report SHIPPED.
Were proved WRONG BY WHO
Just see this link and them tell me who is proved wrong
http://spong.com/article/19131/SCEE-Clarifies-PS3-Install-Base-Maths
legs..what legs are yous expecting..They currently dont have any games to drive these supposedly long legs.
I wonder how much it will drop to next week/month?
wow, I didn't even expect 140k week one, it will likely keep figures similar to these for a long time...I expect it to be a good success unlike what a lot of people think.
Why aren't all standalone move controllers sold counted?... What's this 25% of stand alone move controllers sold counted as units sold BS?... Does VGchartz use this formula when tracking console sales? When one single household buys an Xbox 360 for the den, one for the living room and one for the kids room does VGchartz count the whole household as one unit sold or 3 separate units?
To me it's very simple when a move controller is sold either standalone or part of any bundle it's counted as a unit sold... I'm sure Sony will see it the same way. As far as I'm concerned PS Move is currently at 185,000 units sold.
Just the expected.
Now let's see if Move has as legs as Nintendo hardware.
Nice start. Just take it easy Sony. Slowly release all those AAA games like gt5 , kz3 , MAG with Move. I really don't care if they sell better than Kinect. As long as Sony keeps giving us those amazing AAA games i'm a happy person. :)
Fail
140000 wow FAIL
@poroporo
Ever heard about PR paying for mentioning a product in articles? Its normal happens all the time.
@poroporo
Missed the "at glance" part. Move is so reminiscent of Wii at first glance. Some people are so picky...
Figuring out households with Move will always be highly imprecise. Potentially there are games that can have 7 Move controllers being used simultaneously, which means there will be some people who buy 7 Move controllers. So if 35,000 Move controllers are sold it means anything from 35,000 people buying one Move controller each to 5000 people buying 7 each. At some point there will need to be an estimate of the average number of Move controllers each person buys. The 25% figure estimated above could be a little on the high side, given many people who have PSEye will be buying 2 Move controllers themselves. So the number of buyers of their first Move controller my be down as low as 25%.
Already owning a PSEye I know I'll be buying 2 Move controllers.
Seems like a fairly solid start, and assuming consumer reaction in the real world is generally positive I think 1-1.5 million houses using Move by Jan 2011 will be a pretty decent result.
"Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware"
Why is this necessary? How about a Kinect ad between each post?
Try to keep those useless comments in your head, Mr. Walton.
I actally saw one ad in a paper!
I thought Move would be more of a front-loaded release due to its more core nature? Sure, no big releases yet, still, with all the hardcore crowd onboard, it should have had a ~400-500k debut no?
@ vgno
Im really not sure where you got the idea that the Move is sold out everywhere.
Where i work in the UK we got a shipment of around 30 bundles, and have only sold about 4 since release. And other stores around my area all have them in stock.
I have no doubt that sales will pick up as real games are released for it, and the moment though it is just a PSWii
Sony don't necessarily want to spend most of their marketing budget on the Move right now. They can save it for when the Kinect and holiday season comes around. It could try to take away Kinect hype by making people compare the two techs, people will be more willing to spend money then, and already having an established base could lead to word of mouth reinforcement for those that see the commercials/marketing.
Spending more money on advertisements now could fall on deaf's ear and many of the early adopters don't require advertisements to capture their sales.
"Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware at first glance getting far more press coverage and supported by a significantly larger marketing budget."
And this is in the News section. That really speaks to the validity of this entire article.
It won't be launching in Japan until October 21st.
@vgno
Practically sold out everywhere? What is your source for that? 140,000 is very low. The Motion Plus add-on sold ten times this in it's first week.
Don't get me wrong, it IS impressive hardware. But people don't care about hardware, they care about software. So far, the software has consisted of low-quality copycat titles.
but what about japan? move won't have a release in japan?
but what about japan? move won't have a release in japan?
A good start, not amazing but definitely good.
Move launched in Europe on Friday so thats 3 days. With hardly any marketing that is a good figure. Things like this sell over time, not all at once, just like how Eyepet had legs so will this.
"I share Sony's view that Move will be much more of a slow-burn when compared to Microsoft's Kinect which is undoubtedly a more innovative piece of hardware"
Not to start a war but the Move to the Wiimote is the same as Kinect to the Eyetoy...
Well, I hope movie does fail and kinect also. I want my games made for controllers that don't require me to do much movement tyvm.
Kinect Adventures has preorders of 123,368 in the Americas alone and its 7 weeks till release
so much for 140k worldwide being a good first week ^^
@ d21lewis
but... Kinect will be out by then... =D
lol sorry had to say it! But all in all, not a bad start at all for Move. Nothing amazing, but modest definitely, all things considered. It'll pull down much better numbers near xmas.
Not a bad start. Wait until the holidays. It should be a hot item.
hm, i thought it would be more... something like... well... 1M worldwide first week.. (yeah, i really thought that). so called, the Software for Playstation Move istn that much of a Win for Companies... LUCKILLY, Wii Games that are to come the next Months, can be rather easilly be Converted for PS3, but in addition, there has to be some Unique software... dont Mess this one up Sony, its all about how you advertise Move. // but well, i am crossing my Fingers for Move's Success, and to be honest; i dont thing Kinect will start off much better, or, at least, wont overcome Moves total Sales this Christmas.
Decent start, nothing to write home about, but still. Its important to get adopted by more players this holiday, and if that will happen, with more core games, this could become an overall succesful add-on for the PS3 ;-)
This is really a pointless thread. Without any past data to correlate, and umpteen unknown variables, it is really impossible to estimate numbers to anything better than a factor of 2 to 3. Anywhere from 100'000 to 300'000 moves were sold past weekend is the only number to talk about, Anything else is just fishing for attention.
"As expected, Move is a great big dud."
What a fanboyz's joke, every unbiased reviews are praising Move (unlike kinect), and move is sold out praticly everywhere, d'ont be abused by some vgchartz assumptions/predictions (vgchartz is the only place where ps3 is way under is real numbers : 38,1 since more than 3 months in real life, and sony is giving sold numbers, not shipped like microsoft)
LOL at people who think this is a flop. its only day one for US n hasnt even released in Japan. Stop hating. But Sony needs more advertisment stat, maybe not Kinect level but close
@cloud
It hasn't been a week yet.
so roughly 1/285 ps3 owners bought this the first week, not too bad.
I just wonder how much legs this will have ... in other words will there be a small cadre of adopters and no one else with Move?
Mike from Morgantown
As expected, Move is a great big dud.
For Sony fans: Don't worry. This means PS4 will come sooner.
Decent start at least. Let's see how it ends up.
@Videogirl
We're not sure that's the case yet , maybe we will have two charts on for the "units" and one for the controllers
good enough for an add-on that costs $99 with no advertising...and this are day one sales...
Wii is dying, HD consoles are going up...that's how it should be.
this websites is sooo anti sony... eye toy upgrade with lag and poor tracking is innovative? whahah...funy
So much for the Wii HD!
140 K hardware?? not that impressive?
these are day one sales for NA too
Not bad but not too good either. Games like Sports Champions and Sorcery developed for Move will show how popular the HW is.
Any new product for a system of ~35 million users will sell. Decent sales at the start...now its up to sony to give this product line legs.
