Microsoft sold more than eight million gesture-sensing Kinect controllers for Xbox 360 videogame consoles in just two months, the technology giant's chief executive Steve Ballmer said.
Ballmer used much of his time on stage for a keynote presentation on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas to tout the booming popularity of Xbox 360 devices and the Live online community linked to the consoles.
Over 50 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide, and Live membership has topped 30 million, according to Ballmer.
'This has been the biggest holiday and the biggest year ever for Xbox,' Ballmer said. 'A new member joins Xbox Live every two seconds,' he added.
The Live network lets people play videogames with one another online, access websites such as Facebook, and download movies, music or other digital content.
Ballmer also said that Microsoft sold more than eight million Kinect devices in the 60 days after it hit the market in November. Kinect lets people control on-screen action with body movements or spoken commands.
Microsoft is tapping into Kinect camera and face recognition technology to let people represent themselves in the Live virtual world with animated characters that resemble them and copy expressions and gestures in real time.
Ballmer also used the keynote speech to extol smartphones running on freshly released Windows Phone 7 software and promise that versions for Sprint and Verizon telecom networks in the US would be out in coming months.
Microsoft also took its biggest step away from a long-standing, lucrative alliance with chip maker Intel, announcing that it was teaming up with Britain's ARM Holdings to take on Apple in the tablet and smartphone arena.
Microsoft plans to design a Windows operating system compatible with chips designed by ARM, an Intel rival and the dominant producer of chips for smartphones and tablet computers.
