Ever since the Kinect motion controller launched, there have been rumors that the reason it is selling out in stores is because Microsoft made it so. Supply has been clearly lower than demand. Many have speculated that Microsoft managed the shortage by giving the impression that the accessory was a hot item because it was sold out. Microsoft has spoken out against the rumors, saying that the shortage in stores really comes down to logistical challenges that are common with all new technologies.

"The choices you always have are: do we launch in November or do we wait until February, March when we could hit some bigger launch numbers but then we miss Christmas," Neil Thompson, the general manager for Xbox in the UK and Ireland, told GamesIndustry. "It's absolutely not a strategy, we want to get the product into consumers hands as quickly as we can because we think it's exciting, it's innovative. We wanted to do that for Christmas and that's what we've done."

Three weeks ago, Microsoft was celebrating that it had sold 1 million units of the Kinect in 10 days. Last week, the software giant announced it had sold 2.5 million Kinect units in 25 days. In other words, the overall momentum is something like 100,000 Kinects sold each day, and that's before the 2010 holiday season. Microsoft's goal is to sell 5 million by the end of the year.