According to Japanese media retailer Tsutaya, Kinect's early sales in Japan have been disappointing following its recent launch in the territory. As reported by 1UP Tsutaya merchandiser Taketo Matsuo said in a weekly retail forecast that the device is "off to a pretty rough start", adding that it's selling at around 25 per cent of Sony's PlayStation Move figures.
The report also claims that despite Kinect's target audience of "light [video game] users", most buyers were existing Xbox 360 owners. If an accurate appraisal, Microsoft are struggling to expand their audience in a region the company has found notoriously difficult to break into.
Industry think tank Media Create's figures put Xbox 360 at around 1.4 million sales to date in Japan, compared to PlayStation 3's 5.7 million, meaning that Kinect's ratio to Move is about right in terms of userbase.
As Microsoft hasn't released any Japanese figures at this point, it's not possible to form a clear picture of the overall market, though, and Tsutaya's insight, while useful, represents only one retailer.