I do believe many people want the Xbox to fail. However I believe their strategy is not in removing Kinect, it's in criticizing MS a huge amount after they remove Kinect. They probably even want MS to make Kinect mandatory again.
You can see this in the amount of whining. Pre Kinect removal, there was a TON of whining about how bad Kinect was, and very little defending it. Thus, once it is removed, everybody should be happy, it should be mostly praise, if the complainers intention was true.
Instead, we got a bunch of pro-Kinect complaining when they removed Kinect!
The EXACT same thing happened with the DRM too. Huge complaining when it existed, but rather than joy on removal, more complaining!
I believe the Anti-Xbox forces, who are indeed very organized, know that removing Kinect+lower price will lead to greater success of Xbox. So they are trying to pressure MS now to "take back" kinect. Not because they like kinect, or want Xbox to succeed, but because they want Xbox to fail.
A great example of this was last gen. MS had the lower priced core unit without a HDD. Sony fans HATED that SKU with a passion. Endless criticism and trying to force MS to rid that SKU, especially in the first 2-3 years of last gen. Remember that? It didn't work and the core unit helped 360 outsell PS3 worldwide, as they had feared.
Remember all the trumped up stories how GTA was crippled (no flying was the fake claim) because no HDD in every XBox, and stuff like that? Get outta here. As if people had magically forgotten the PS2 had no HDD the previous gen and worked just fine.
