January NPD 2019

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Biggerboat1 said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

 

Translation: You don't have a good answer to the question, and yet you are too stubborn to change your opinion.

Well this is an interesting line of thinking.  Let's follow this argument to it's logical conclusion.  (I actually think you are on to something, but maybe miss a detail or two.)

There were 33m who got Wii Sports Resort (and motion+), and 24m who got Kinect.  A total of 57m.  (Let's ignore the Move for simplicity).  If your line of thinking is correct, then most of these people would already have a Wii.  They already enjoyed motion controls, and they wanted an upgrade, either Kinect or Wii motion+.  And even the ones who never had a Wii also were enthusiastic for motion controls, they just wanted the tech to improve beyond the basic Wii remote.  So either way you have 57m people who are very enthusiastic about motion controls.  (Again assuming your argument is correct.)  Furthermore these people do not treat motion controls as a fad.  They didn't just play the Wii for a year or so and move on.  They played the Wii and then several years later wanted even more.  These are motion control gamers who have no intention of leaving gaming.

The main problem with this argument is that these 57m gamers did not show up to buy the XB1.  In fact, the 24m people who initially bought Kinect did not show up to buy the XB1 either.  There is no indication that these gamers actually were enthusiastic about the Kinect at all.  If they actually liked Kinect Adventures, XB1 would have had strong sales right out of the gate.  Obviously it did not. 

Instead 24m people were convinced to try out Kinect, and their response to it was "meh".  It was not a craze.  It is difficult to find people who actually liked the Kinect.  It is instead much easier to find people who will swear that "other people" like Kinect.  If it were such a craze then why won't these people come forward themselves?

 A craze or a fad can end though, just look at Wii to Wii U...

Motion controls were once much more popular than they are now, tastes change, and the hot new thing gets cold & old - it's not a constant.

That would explain why those numbers didn't carry over to XB1 & Wii U. The fact that this trend away from motion controls happened across both Nintendo & Microsoft only lends support to this conclusion!

I don't believe anyone is arguing that Kinnect stayed popular, just that it was popular for a time and in that time it helped sell some consoles - seems reasonable enough to me...

I don't follow you.  How did the craze end going from Wii to Wii U? 

For all we know the Wii motion control craze might have kept going.  We'll never know, because Nintendo never made motion control games on the Wii U like, say a Wii Sports Resort 2.  If the "craze" ended then it was because Nintendo killed it.  It wasn't because the customers got disinterested, because they were never given that chance.  They never gave motion controls a shot on the Wii U.  The controllers were there, but the games were not.

On the other hand Microsoft really did try to make Kinect the main focus of the XB1, because they bundled it with the XB1.  Nintendo instead bundled the Wii U gamepad, a different direction entirely.  Microsoft was trying to stick with motion controls.