January NPD 2019

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Wyrdness said:

The_Liquid_Laser said:

 

Well this is an interesting line of thinking.  Let's follow this argument to it's logical conclusion.  (I actually think you are on to something, but maybe miss a detail or two.)

There were 33m who got Wii Sports Resort (and motion+), and 24m who got Kinect.  A total of 57m.  (Let's ignore the Move for simplicity).  If your line of thinking is correct, then most of these people would already have a Wii.  They already enjoyed motion controls, and they wanted an upgrade, either Kinect or Wii motion+.  And even the ones who never had a Wii also were enthusiastic for motion controls, they just wanted the tech to improve beyond the basic Wii remote.  So either way you have 57m people who are very enthusiastic about motion controls.  (Again assuming your argument is correct.)  Furthermore these people do not treat motion controls as a fad.  They didn't just play the Wii for a year or so and move on.  They played the Wii and then several years later wanted even more.  These are motion control gamers who have no intention of leaving gaming.

The main problem with this argument is that these 57m gamers did not show up to buy the XB1.  In fact, the 24m people who initially bought Kinect did not show up to buy the XB1 either.  There is no indication that these gamers actually were enthusiastic about the Kinect at all.  If they actually liked Kinect Adventures, XB1 would have had strong sales right out of the gate.  Obviously it did not. 

Instead 24m people were convinced to try out Kinect, and their response to it was "meh".  It was not a craze.  It is difficult to find people who actually liked the Kinect.  It is instead much easier to find people who will swear that "other people" like Kinect.  If it were such a craze then why won't these people come forward themselves
?

Your argument doesn't really do anything to disprove what any of us has said as it's very much a speculative piece trying to play down concrete numbers, Wii was the first time any home console catered specifically to the blue ocean so it was a new market even though casuals had always been around since the NES they never really were focused on until the DS and Wii came along and built a market specifically around them and new gamers with lite gaming needs. What gaming companies didn't realize was two things one was the rise of mobile and two was that the blue ocean being mainly new gamers and casuals don't exhibit the same spending habits and patterns as dedicated avid gamers so when they bought the Wii they would be happy with it alone with many likely only having a few titles like Wiisports throughout to the point they won't rush out and get anything else as their needs for gaming were lite. The result was many of them didn't move on from the Wii to the Wii U as the is no incentive for them in their gaming needs to do so instead the market was hijacked by the mobile gaming boom which launched using a similar approach to what Nintendo brought.

MS entered into the blue ocean with the Kinect and did well and ran into the same problem the Kinect owners didn't move on to the X1 because they saw no need to as these aren't avid gamers they were new gamers with lite gaming needs that already had devices giving them what both Wii U and X1 were trying to entice them with this is why the Wii still gets versions of Just Dance that still break 1m. The X1 argument itself is very flimsy because the platform was also heavily expensive and was not marketed as a blue ocean device either with MS trying to push a multimedia agenda at the time Kinect was bundled more as a UI feature than for games.

Microsoft never entered the Blue Ocean.  Blue Ocean means "intentionally not trying to compete".  The Kinect was definitely trying to compete with the Wii.  Therefore it was not Blue Ocean.  It's main target were people who already owned a Wii.  (This is why I said you were close to the right track in your previous post.)

Mobile is irrelevant, because it had nothing to do with motion controls.  It literally makes no sense that the entire motion control market would go to mobile gaming.  They have nothing in common.  It is even debatable if the handheld market went to mobile, but at least they have something in common.  The motion control market has nothing in common with mobile.

Let me get back to my original point.  Kinect was never a craze.  This may be harder to understand if you don't live in the USA, but no one cared at all about the Kinect.  USA is supposed to be Microsoft's main market right?  Kinect was never a thing here.  The Wii was sold out for years.  It was a huge craze and people were talking about it a lot in RL (and not just internet gaming forums).  No one cared about Kinect. 

I was posting in this thread last night, and my wife asked what I was doing.  Both her and my daughter really played a lot of the Wii and Wii U and Switch.  They also have plenty of friends who are like gamers.  They would be the so called "casual audience" people refer to only they play lots of games.  I told her, "I'm replying to some guy who thinks Kinect was a craze."  Her reply was, "What's Kinect?" and my daughter said the same thing from the other room.  When I explained what it was, they burst out laughing.  They are the so called perfect target audience for Kinect and yet they've never even heard of it!  Ask them about Fortnite or Minecraft or any other legitimate craze and they will tell you all about it.  But they've never heard of Kinect, and do you know why?  Kinect was never a craze.