You get technical by saying they all have big budgets if backed by a big company. But then you go back to the same stupid argument implying Kinect is only a success because of big marketing.

PS Eye (and eyetoy) are too limited because they are just webcams. Almost all the games involve you staring at an image of your self and smacking objects. You couldn't produce games similar to Dance Central, Kinectimals, Joyride, or Kinect Sports on a simple webcam. There was nothing for Sony to push.

Nobody is saying Kinect is the first time cameras were used for gaming. But MS took it to the next level and people took notice.

You say MS spent money on the Kinect and not the console. Last I checked the Kinect requires the console. Hence, they did spend money on the console. Kinect boosted console sales significantly and brought a more diverse audience to the 360. Sony tried to do the same with Move but it failed. I'd hardly say Nintendo is backing their console. They've pretty much thrown in the towel with Wii as they are getting ready to launch a new console.

The biggest mistake in gaming history is when Nintendo backed out of their deal with Sony to create an add-on for the SNES called the Nintendo Play Station.

Oh, right. N64 would have been a much bigger success had it used discs.

If Nintendo can sell that many balance boards, then I'm not at all surprised at Kinect sales, good marketing will sell shit, especially on the 360's hometurf. There shouldn't even need to be a thread about it imo, should be a given. Whether or not the device is actually good, is up to the individuals that have used it, I can say in confidence that personally, I'm not impressed, at all, but that's just me.

Passing on Kinect would've been a bad move if it helped microsoft long term but it seems it only helped for the holiday season and first 1-3 months of this year. Looking at his beautiful chart you can see 

http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php

That kinect is being outsold by wii fit and just dance 2

It used to be big like this

http://www.vgchartz.com/weekly.php?date=40685&reg=World&date=40580

The only way its a mistake is if you look short term and only look at the holiday season and America sales. It did little in Europe and nothing in Japan 

That's actually a pretty interesting comparison. It's a bit surprising it hasn't been brought up more often.

Even with the lack of must buy titles that utilized the BB, it still sold so well that Nintendo had trouble keeping up with production to match demand for what felt like well over a year.

After Wii Fit 2, which was simply a substitute for Wii Fit 1, what was there? I played Shaun White Snowboarding and Punch Out with the board and didn't exactly feel as though either added much to the value of the BB, not that it mattered since I did get a good 6 months entertainment/usage out of Wii Fit; a lot longer than most games.

It's been about half a year since Kinect debuted and currently Dance Central and Kinect Sports seem to be the only significant titles. And yet that remains enough to continue to sell the peripheral. If anything, the only mistake with Kinect may have been hinting at its appeal to the core audience in terms of traditional core games without actually delivering. 

That's what I'm saying, you only need 1 or 2 games to sale lackluster hardware, fuck, the Wii kicked everybody's balls with Wii Sports that came with the system. It's all in the marketing and where you are targetting it. I think using Kinect for core titles is a super dumb idea and they should just stop before shit goes to hell.

That being said, I've paied for 2 balance boards so far, and I have 2 Wiis, I guess the marketing on those worked......

Also, didn't some kid try to argue with me about Asia sales? The months have passed, where is he now? My prediction of shit sales in Asia already came true awhile ago, he owes me a I'm right statement.

Once again the misconceptions creep up, and as I seemingly have to do every six months I will correct them. Here is what you need to know about carts versus discs. The cart that Nintendo used cost the third party developer twenty dollars for manufacturing and licensing. Both of which belonged to Nintendo. There was no haggling here every copy of a 64 game cost a developer twenty dollars per copy. I really wish I could dig up a reference for you, but while the internet has a very long memory. Search engines abhor going back over a decade. Anyway you can recall this annecdotally by the fact that you almost never saw N64 games in retail priced below twenty dollars. That was the break even point on the product. Even then the developer took a bath on development costs.

Sony was a entirely different story. Firstly with manufacturing and licensing a game would cost a manufacturer up front about six dollars. A couple dollars for manufacturing, and four dollars for licensing. Developers could even manage to get a better deal if Sony decided to offer them special consideration. Added onto that Sony worked under a buy back model. Which gave them greater retail penetration. What a retailer couldn't sell. Sony would buy back. This wasn't exactly a real pain for Sony mind you. Buying back an unsold disc for a couple dollars, and since it costed so little to make to begin with the games price could steadily decrease to bargain bin prices. This not only made retailers happy. It made developers happy, because they didn't incur that risk, and the sales window was significantly lengthened. 

Basically the 64 cost developers forty percent off the top. While assuming all the risks. While the PS1 only cost a mere ten percent off the top. While the developer assumed very little risk beyond the development. So Nintendo was seen as cost prohibitive. While Sony was readily accessible. The end result was this. More developers made more games for the PS1. Rather then for the 64. In fact unlike the modern port market. You could make a profit on a game for the PS1, and yet show a loss for the same game on the 64. Worse yet the 64 port could actually cost the developer the profits made on the PS1.

Example of porting. 

$1,000,000 development costs. Break even per console, N64 = 35,000, PS1 = 19,000. Sales N64 = 20,000 PS1 = 25,000. Profit N64 -$300,000 PS1 $312,000. Total profit $12,000. 

Nintendo was not only a bad place to make money, but a place where you could lose big money. Third parties who did do business on the N64. Were large enough to make it profitable, or were calculating enough to develop so cheaply so as to be able to make money off of poor sales. There was little in the way of middle ground on the console. With game development costs rising, and a larger field. Developers didn't have any real choice. It was plain better to just develop for the PS1, and ignore Nintendo. Who lets face it were raping the shit out of the little guy.

Speaking to Nintendo passing on the PS1. The mistake was farming out an entire consoles worth of development. It is not a case of Nintendo passed so Sony ran with the thing. Sony took advantage of the situation, and demanded a joint venture. Which Nintendo promptly passed on. Really it was a lose/lose proposition. They would lose some control, and lose some profit. Ironically in hindsight it is looking like it was a good call. Given the troubles Sony has brought upon its investors this generation. No matter how you feel as a gamer. Speaking financially Nintendo has been doing pretty good financially, and that is all their own doing.

Kinect is big now, but it would have been even more massive with Nintendo backing it. It could have been Nintendo's next big innovation that prolonged the life of the Wii or made Project Cafe a guaranteed huge success. That's why it was a big mistake for Nintendo to let it pass by.

They are meant to be played for fun.They are games... I'm still waiting on what makes them different. You seem to be the third(second?) person that has a problem with this, yet still no reasons why