MICROSOFT HAS sold one million Kinect motion-gaming devices in the 10 days since the Xbox 360 accessory launched, providing a needed boost to the games hardware market ahead of Christmas.

Kinect is crucial for Microsoft if it is to reduce Nintendo’s lead in the sagging games console market and lure more casual gamers away from the internet and smartphones.

The €150 device allows people to play games using physical movement, gestures and voice commands,without the hand-held controller normally used with games consoles.

Don Mattrick, president of the interactive entertainment business at Microsoft, said: “This is a great start to the holiday season. We will continue to work with our retailer partners to keep pace with high demand and deliver against our plan to sell more than five million Kinect sensors worldwide by the end of this year.”

Microsoft did not say how many of the one million devices were sold individually or as part of a console bundle.

Best Buy, the US electronics retailer, said it expected Kinect to be a Christmas best-seller.

By Christmas, Kinect will be available in 38 countries, with 17 supporting games, selling to an installed base of 45 million Xbox 360 consoles.

The success of Nintendo’s Wii since its 2006 launch has been attributed to its motion-sensitive controller, which makes it easier for non-gamers to play.

Microsoft and Sony have released their responses to the Wii in the past two months, with the PlayStation Move and Xbox's Kinect. But the Wii has seen a rapid drop in sales this year, and some observers have questioned whether stretched consumers would pay for more hardware this year – especially with the simultaneous release of Activision's blockbuster game, Call of Duty: Black Ops, which set sales records last week.

Sony’s Move controller, which launched in October, sold one million devices in its first 30 days in the US, with more than 1.5 million sold in Europe over the same period.

Piers Harding-Rolls, games analyst at Screen Digest, a research group, said Kinect sales so far were “in line with expectations”.

He forecasts sales to consumers will be 4.5 million, with a similar number of homes also likely to buy Sony’s Move controllers. “I think Wii will be the biggest seller over Christmas globally,” he said.

Screen Digest forecasts Wii sales of seven to eight million, down from 11.5 million in 2009. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)