It amazes me how stupid hardcore gamers have been about Kinect every step of the way, completely not understanding the market or what is happening. I've been exactly on the money about Kinect since it was announced. I'm not jumping any gun. I know exactly what is happening and what is going to happen next.
Kinect is dropping because the holiday is over. How silly can you be? Casual games in particular are focused around holiday sales. Look at the Wii sales trends each year.
And I have to respond to this bit:
"NPD January 2010:
Xbox 360- 332,800
NPD January 2011:
Xbox 360- 381,000"
This compares to Wii
NPD January 2010 -- January 2011
466K > 319K
and PS3:
NPD January 2010 -- January 2011
277K > 267K
The US economy is in very bad shape. The entire game industry is down and yet Xbox 360 sales are increasing. Nobody's sales should be increasing in 2011. And this is despite the fact that Microsoft is having supply issues and gave guidance on these problems a month ago at CES. Without Kinect Xbox 360 sales numbers would be at least 100K lower this month and Wii at least 30K higher.
This is a software driven business and when the next generation of Kinect games hit holiday 2011 you will see yet another signicant rise in hardware sales that never would have been possible for Xbox 360 without Kinect.
