Kinect Gets Into the Guinness Book of World Records

In four short months, Microsoft has sold more than 10 million Kinects. The device, which serves as a controller-less gaming system (among other more innovative things) burst out of the gates last November, selling  2.5 million units in less than a month. At that pace, it seemed, the Kinect was bound to break records.

Today, it has done just that and the Guinness Book of World Records has named the device the “Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device.” Just how fast has Kinect been selling? Read on.

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When we looked at Kinect sales at the end of November, just 25 days after its launch, it had sold 2.5 million units. That’s 100,000 Kinects a day. Surely, that was just because the device was brand new, right? Maybe not.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Kinect sold at “an average of 133,333 units per day, for a total of 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale from 4 November 2010 to 3 January 2011,” leaving both the iPhone and the iPad in the dust. As a matter of fact, when Kinect hit the market, 2 million units hit consumers’ homes in half the time it took for the iPad.

Gaz Deaves, an editor for the Guinness Book of World Records, says that the sales figures are truly remarkable.

“The sales figures here speak for themselves,” said Deaves. ” We can confirm that no other consumer electronics device sold faster within a 60-day time span, an incredible achievement considering the strength of the sector.”

Not that any of this is news to Microsoft. Two months before the device’s launch, Microsoft pulled a Babe Ruth and pointed to the bleachers, predicting that Kinect would “blow away any of the sales you’ve seen with iPad.”

By comparison, the iPad sold 2 million in 60 days and 3 million in 80 days. The Kinect has been on the market for 125 days and sold 10 million. Even being nice, if we say that the iPad could keep up with its pace of 2 million in 60 days, the Kinect is still selling more than two times as fast.

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