Okay, I've been lurking on the forums to see the reaction to Kinect. The two opinions on Kinect's success seem to be:

1. It's awesome! D'uh!

2. $500 million marketing!

I don't agree with either, and don't think either sees the big picture.

The success of Kinect was enabled because Nintendo created the market for it, and then didn't aggressively pursue it. Nintendo, it seems, can hardly identify who their core audience--their NEW core audience--is anymore, and are only interminently interested in giving them what they want. Nintendo failed to fulfill the promise of Wii, and now Wii users are leaving for Kinect.

The new core for Nintendo are the previous "expanded audience" who bought Nintendogs and Brain Age on DS, Wii Sports and Wii Fit on Wii, and 2D Mario and Mario Kart on both systems. But all of those series launched or rebooted by the end of 2007, when Wii Fit came out in Japan. Since then, Nintendo has basically had sequels for the new core audience, and some of those, like Wii Fit Plus or Animal Crossing Wii, were basically marginal expansions. Wii Sports Resort fleshed out the concept of Wii Sports, but awkwardly seperated the audience with MotionPlus. Without New Super Mario Bros. Wii, the last 3 years for Nintendo look pretty mediocre, actually. Now Nintendo has to rely on Donkey Kong and Wii Party to go head-to-head with Kinect.

Remember how much things changed over the last 6 years. The game market looked fine from 1990-2004, as sales slowly increased over that period. But Nintendo alone recognized that in a period when America was growing, when PlayStation was aggressively growing in Europe, and when a middle class was ready to emerge in other markets around the world, that games could be selling much, much more. They pursued new audiences, and created a new gaming age. And what 10 million sales were to 1991, 25 million are to this new age. And so if Kinect launched to sales that suggested it could sell 10 million lifetime, I wouldn't think that much of it. But it launched to sales that suggest in can sell 25 million lifetime. That suggest it could be relevant in the new age of Nintendo.

2011 will be interesting. To a large extent, Kinect doesn't have great content yet. But Microsoft has said 2011 will be a year of Kinect. It will be interesting to watch whether Kinect or 3DS gets more of the content that created the Nintendo revival, since neither MS or Nintendo appear entirely sure how to create it.

@rolstoppable YES YES YES finally someone said it!! I have been saying they dropped the whole Motion ball for years, but then I come across as a hater. IMHO the Wiimote should have been as accurate as the Motion from the START. The games would have worked better and I think more things could have been done. Some might say that Ninty might not have had the R&D money at the time to make it as accurate as it could have been, fine but then as soon as they were making a killing they should have thrown that baby out a little sooner. It could have had a chance to establish an audience. Ninty themselves barely support the damn thing, WiiSports Resort & Flingsmash???  26 games in a year and a half??? PS Move has been out for 6 months and they have about 50 Move enable games already, that is disgusting. And people wonder why Im not excited for that vitality sensor, it probably will get little support

They really more took advantage of a market which was asynchronous to the Wii's core values. The Wii didn't create this market, it always existed. The Wii just couldn't take advantage of it in the same way that Microsoft and Sony couldn't take advantage of the Wii market given how they had created their machines in a certain way.

OT I think that Ninty is trying to be proactive, I say because their "new core audience" is made of people who got Wii solely for WiiSports, Fit, etc. Now I can only speak for myself but the people who I know did that dont even touch their Wii anymore. Its not like they were were playing PS2, 1, GC N64 etc. So the whole Wii novelty kind of faded on them. THats just been my experience, and if this experience is similiar across the board I can see why Ninty went back to their faithfuls and is like "see, baby, I never left" and all is good. It seems they are taking that approach with the 3DS as well. There are alot of straight up core titles in that line. THey look to be following PSP in that regard, IMHO im all for it. I never really cared for those motion heavy games on Wii anyway so it wont keep me up at night if a lot less of them are being made. THe same for 3DS, I love PSP because to me it takes CONSOLE gaming on the go. Never really like those cooking mama and Nintendog things on DS, to me there just overpriced, glorified flash games. As I said this is just how I feel, and some may feel the opposite. you cant please everybody

Aren't we making some pretty big assumptions here?  Nintendo just celebrated its 5th Christmas season and had near-record sales levels in the US.  People love Kinect, but the Wii is still immensely popular-- I talked to a number of women at work that just bought a Wii this year and are loving it. M$ doesn't have the software development potential of Nintendo and all the established IPs. I also think it is a logical fallacy to think that Wii users are leaving for Kinect. Many of the casual users have both Kinect and Wii at this point.  Many people prefer Wii for social/casual gaming because of the 4-player support which Kinect has not been able to deliver. 

Kinect is great but it is still only in its infancy.  No doubt it will continue to sell well, but it still has a lot to prove.  Most of the games scheduled to be released look pretty uninspired so far.

Another way of looking at this, is that Kinect's success points to Nintendo's success. The idea of motion based gaming will now go forward into the next generation with all the big three players.

We also need to consider that M$ is going to be heavily relying on 3rd party developers to bring life to Kinect.  These 3rd party developers have utterly failed the Wii.  Will they clean up their act for Kinect?

Many of the games for Kinect are going to be pretty much the exact same games on the Wii with slight variations:  You Shape, Michael Jackson, Zumba Fitness, etc.  How many games will Kinect actually have that are exclusive and solid AA-AAA?  I think they may struggle with this if they don't have Nintendo's software developing prowess. Kinect will obviously be supported in many future Xbox exclusives like Halo, but how will the casual games actually be that different? 

Sure Kinect Adventures has had a tremendous boost this week. It alone looks like to sell to atleast 20 million units life time, provided EMAA and Japan continue to be lured. Well the excessive marketing was least effective in these regions but Americas turned out to be crucial. Now just need to see how long this trend can continue onto post holidays.

I don't blame the developers as much as I blame the consumers. Wii gets an endless wave of garbage because people keep buying them!

Hopefully Kinect owners will show better judgement in their software purchases. Hence, lets hope consumers cleaned up their act. So far so good in my opinion as the better Kinect games seem to be doing well.

The better Wii games sold best initially too.  The problem was content... when you're getting 90% garbage, not just the gems are going to float to the top.   And honestly, quality wise Kinect's launch is looking even worse than Wii launch did 3rd party wise.

I also wouldn't say MS is going to have to rely on 3rd parties though, early on the 1st party games (Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports, Kinectimals, Dance Central) have really taken the overwhelming lead and I'm not sure that's going to change in the future.  It really is just like Wii all over again, Microsoft's driving the platform almost single handedly.