Sony can take heart in the fact that its motion-sensing Move is outselling rival Microsoft’s Kinect somewhere.
While Microsoft proudly crowed that its infinitely hackable Kinect was the “fastest-selling consumer electronics device in history,” Sony remained curiously quiet about the fate of its Move.
Not to make a value judgment either way – everyone is free to find Move better than Kinect or vice versa – it doesn’t take Isaac Newton to guess that Sony’s quietude regarding the Move is indicative of it taking a beating worse than Sylvester Stallone in the first act of a Rocky movie.
According to a Media Create report, though, there is one bright spot for Sony and the PlayStation Move: Analysts estimate that Move sold 170,000 units throughout 2010 in Japan, compared to a mere 90,000 Kinect cameras sold in the same period.
Japan’s antipathy for the Xbox 360 has been well-chronicled by this point – the Kinect didn’t even sell as many copies as Nintendo’s red Wii celebrating Mario’s 25th anniversary (97,000 units, if you were wondering).
However, both the Kinect and the Move were soundly drubbed by a peripheral you probably haven’t heard of: Torne, Sony’s little gadget that turns your PS3 into a DVR to record TV shows for later viewing. Including bundle sales, Torne sold a whopping 784,000 units in Japan during 2010, though to be fair it did have a several-month head start thanks to its March 2010 release.
Torne is, as previously mentioned, a Sony product. So even if Move is flagging, Sony can at least take heart in the news that its other gizmos are still going strong.
