The battle over video game 
motion control devices has moved to the accounting department.
Sony and Microsoft are both claiming to have momentum on their side with their new devices, releasing updated sales figures. No matter how you slice it, though, it’s clear that both the PlayStation Move and Kinect are enjoying a strong holiday season.
After a year of disappointing sales figures 
and investor malaise, the video game industry is feeling some seasonal cheer.
The kick off to the holidays has been a boom time for game makers this year – with stellar sales for both hardware and software.
The question for investors, though, is whether this seasonal bump is the start of a turnaround for gaming companies – or just a short-term surge that will fade away by the end of December.
This holiday season, gadgets are a good 
worry-free gift to get that bizzer who has everything — particularly since everything that’s tech seems to be changing. From 3D TV and a video-streaming set-top box to a new twist on motion-capture gaming, Variety has put together a list of the latest gizmos that are sure to be as much fun to give as they are to receive.
Adrenalin Misfits won’t be a game that people
talk about in six months. Sadly, many will have forgotten about it. But that’s not to say they won’t have fun with it today. It’s the gaming equivalent of a potato chip: fun to enjoy for a brief moment, but something that leaves you hungry for more. The controls are inexact and might cause some frustration, but not to the extent that families won’t get past it. (Gaming enthusiasts are more likely to notice the problems.) The characters are largely forgettable and try too hard to be edgy, but being able to use your Xbox Live avatar to board down a mountain is novel. Both single- and multiplayer modes (split screen on the same TV) are fun and can be a good bonding experience for families — and might get the kids excited about some real outdoor winter activities.
Cementing its status as one of the year’s “must have” 
holiday items, Microsoft’s Kinect has sold more than 1 million units in its first 10 days on the market.
That’s a strong start for the peripheral, which uses motion capture technology to let players use their bodies to control videogames on the Xbox 360. It’s certainly a stronger reaction than Sony saw with its entry in the motion control category earlier this year. The company shipped 1 million PlayStation Move units to retailers in that device’s first month on shelves, but did not sell them all.
Microsoft has a hit on its hands
with Kinect, the motion capture device that lets players act as the controller for the Xbox 360. The company says it has sold more than 1 million units in the first 10 days of availability.
That’s a significantly stronger start than Sony’s PlayStation Move – which shipped 1 million units in its first month of availability, but did not sell that many. It also underscores the “must have” status of Kinect as the company gears up for the holiday shopping season.
DanceMasters is an incredibly fun game that puts 
no pressure on players to learn complicated moves. The point is less about nailing routines as it is about scoring points and moving. There’s plenty of flailing about, but that’s half the fun. The song selection likely won’t be familiar to people who don’t go to dance clubs, though, so you won’t be able to dance to songs you’re familiar with — and only 20 of the game’s 31 songs are initially available. (You have to unlock the others and DanceMasters isn’t real clear about how to go about doing that.) Downloadable digital content will seemingly broaden the catalog, but we would have liked to have seen one or two familiar songs.
[Gamasutra’s Chris Morris looks at the factors that will 
dictate Kinect’s market prospects at launch and down the line, opining that Microsoft’s holiday season looks secured — but that it “might have screwed some of its partners in the process.”]
Two months ago, when Sony’s PlayStation Move hit shelves, I wondered whether Sony had lost its mind. The device, I mentioned, wasn’t intuitive and had some alarming aesthetic issues – a combination that could hurt its chances with the mainstream audience.
Now Kinect has arrived – and while it has just as many problems as Move, it seems poised to thoroughly trounce its competitor this holiday season.
For all the media attention and fanfare, you might think Microsoft was launching a new console today. And given what the company is spending on marketing its latest peripheral, you wouldn’t be that far off.
Kinect, a motion sensor device that allows users to play games simply by using gestures and voice commands, hit shelves today – and is predicted by many to become one of this year’s “must have” holiday gifts. Microsoft is so confident in the device that is has raised its internal sales predictions for calendar 2010 from 3 million to 5 million.
But is it any good?
Microsoft rolled the dice when it 
decided to get into the video game motion control market. Nintendo, with the Wii, had certainly proven that there was an audience interested in a more intuitive controller, but with over 71 million of the consoles sold worldwide, the potential for market saturation was strong.
As the company rolls out Kinect on Thursday, early signs are showing that the gamble was a wise one.
Chris Morris: Journalist 