I think it certainly wouldn't have hurt. Launching with a Kinectless SKU would have helped enough that it would have passed Wii U by now, and might even be keeping up with PS4. I think the forced Kinect hurt the public perception of the XBO as much as the other 180s, perhaps even more, since they kept slowly changing their policies with it up to launch but never went full 180 like the did with the other unwanted policies. If anything, telling the consumer "hey, you can now unplug it, but you still have to buy it" hurt the perception more than the DRM stuff, because it showed once and for all (in the public's eyes) that the Kinect was a peripheral, not actually part of the XBO, but still forced you to buy it. If they'd just made it optional from the beginning or stuck to their guns and made the XBO not function without it, I think public perception would have been better either way than making it non essential but still forcing it.
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