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archbrix on 16 November 2010
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Squilliam said:
archbrix said:

@Seece & @Kowenicki:

You make some good points in your arguments on this thread, but I think you could be overestimating just how well Kinect's sales will sustain over a long period of time.  Your views are certianly logical:  Huge scale advertising, a new casual market to appeal to and over 40m 360 owners it could sell to as well.  And as I said earlier, I'm not dismissing the possibility that Kinect could be an enormous hit.

The problem is Nintendo has already made its mark as the casual friendly system with both the Wii and Wii Fit/balance board.  I just don't see a large percentage of Wii's audience ever running out to buy a 360 for Kinect, even with the inevitable price drops.  Nintendo came along at the right time with the right product, IMO.

I have no reason to want Kinect to fail.  I don't work for Nintendo or Sony and if Kinect comes out with some killer core games I will gladly purchase a 360 for one.  But at this point I see the core sticking with any of the three consoles for their core experiences, while the casuals gravitate towards the Wii, or possibly even the PS3 as it is a blu-ray player and has motion controllers that seem to be far more precise and practical in a gaming environment than Kinect.  But only time will tell...

You're making a similar argument to why the DS wouldn't sell.

DS won't sell because Sony are lord and masters and they have the uber powerful PSP which will leverage their massive 100M plus console userbase and leave little room for such a niche device.

Kinect won't sell because Nintendo are lord and masters and they have uber powerful brand and unique software so Microsoft doesn't have a hope in competing outside of a niche.

Releasing a half baked software/hardware device and then improving upon it hasn't stopped Apple from making even more profit than Nintendo nor sell more devices than Nintendo whilst showing even more growth than Nintendo. There is obvious room for improvement within the time-frame which will increase the value proposition or decrease the cost or both, even on a 12 month timescale.

To put things in perspective, Kinect is currently selling around as fast as the Wii when it originally launched if I read the articles correctly.

 

 

While Kinect is selling wonderfully, with the standalone unit pretty much an instant sellout, bundled units were still available on Amazon and many retailers several days after launch.  The Wii on the other hand was an instant sellout for well over a year after launch.  Stores had units for no more than a few hours if they were lucky after new shipments arrived.  But I do expect Kinect will mirror that during the holidays.  To sustain that as long as Wii will simply depend on Microsoft's and third party's ingenuity with the device.