It seems like just last November, Microsoft was predicting it'd sell around 5 million Kinect sensors by now. Wait -- it was last November! Anyway, that prediction was off by 3 million units ... in the company's favor. MS boss Steve Ballmer just told the crowd at his CES 2011 keynote that 8 million of the devices have been sold worldwide in six months. (We're guessing that's units shipped to retail, not sold through to consumers, but Microsoft wasn't more specific.)

2.5 million Kinects had been shipped by the end of November 2010, this after one industry analyst predicted that it was possible the hardware could top 4 million sold by January 31 of last year. What a pessimist!