[Update: Although Ballmer used the word "sold," and specifically compared the 8 million units to Microsoft's sales projections of 5 million units, Dina Bass of Bloomberg News reports on Twitter that the 8 million figure is actually units sold into the channel, a.k.a. shipped to retailers -- not units sold to consumers. The company tells her it still "far surpassed" the 5 million unit sales projection, but it isn't saying by how much.]

[Update II: Aaron Greenberg, chief of staff for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, offers this explanation on Twitter: "We have no channel inventory, so essentially the same #....every Kinect we make we sell." (Thanks to reader Matthew Percy for pointing this out in the comments below.)]

Microsoft says it sold more than 8 million of its Kinect motion-based controllers for Xbox 360 worldwide in the first 60 days of availability, blowing past its previous public projection of 5 million units sold for the holiday season -- which had been raised from an earlier target of 3 million.

CEO Steve Ballmer made the announcement this evening on stage during the opening keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show, available here via live stream.

Ballmer also confirmed that Microsoft this spring will launch a new virtual chat service for the console, dubbed AvatarKinect, which will use the Kinect sensors to show facial features such as smiles, laughs and raised eyebrows. People will be able to use the service to chat with one another via their Xbox Live avatars on screen.

Among other Xbox tidbits, the company said it has reached 30 million Xbox Live members. Microsoft also confirmed a spring launch for the HuluPlus video service on Xbox Live.