People should wait for Kinect's first year in review before declaring it a game winning success.
It had a great launch, exceeding all industry expectations, supported by a highly successful marketing campaign. Initial soft sales, while far from staggering given the sheer number of Kinect units moved this season, are still respectable. In short, it's safe to say everyone is not buying Kinect to hack and fool around with on their PC or Mac.
My only big question mark in regards to Kinect is what are the AAA titles in 2011 that really justify buying the peripheral? It was one of the hot gifts for holiday 2010, and now it's time to deliver the software.
Yes, Dance Central is a great expanded audience title that will continue to sell as an evergreen title; same for Kinect Sports. But the core Xbox audience really hasn't been told what benefits they'll be enjoying by having Kinect in terms of a Gears of War or Halo title that successfully incorporates Kinect interaction. There's Forza 4, but no serious player is actually going to use dumbed down Kinect controls when it's a given that any serious player is already using a Logitec steering wheel controller for driving games. There's always the possiblity of a Fable 4 with Kinect given the character interaction demonstration/simulation done with Milo, but that won't be happening in 2011 if at all.
So there seems to be this smug attitude over the success of Kinect with essentially nothing to show for it other than impressive hardware sales figures that mean nothing until those translate into better support in the form of better games.
I'm still waiting; I'm not sure why others are celebrating.
