Festive gestures
The consumer electronics and toy industries typically start obsessing about what the big ‘must-have' Christmas present will be on Boxing Day of the previous year.
According to a new predictive survey from market researcher IDC, strong candidates will be new motion controller systems from Microsoft and Sony.
The survey was conducted in conjunction with gamepro.com, and was restricted to the US. It predicted that Americans would buy between 2.5 and three million Kinect sensors for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and two million or so Move motion controllers for the Sony PlayStation 3. Given that nearly all of these sales will have occurred in the final quarter of the year, that's not a bad start.
"While it doesn't appear Kinect or Move will be this year's Tickle Me Elmo, millions of additional U.S. households will be enjoying motion-based gaming this holiday season," said Lewis Ward of IDC. "Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus controller has an installed base over 10 million units right now but the new interfaces and associated games from Sony and Microsoft are going to give many shoppers pause moving forward."
The same survey predicted what the top-selling games would be for Q4:
- Activision/Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops (estimated 11.7 million units)
- LucasArts' Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II;
- Electronic Arts' Medal of Honor;
- Microsoft/Bungie's Halo: Reach;
- Microsoft/Lionhead's Fallout: New Vegas (estimated 4.3 million units)
