The Kinect was a media darling but never lived up to its hype.

The only spot kinect failed was getting hardcore games, but in nearly ever other category it was a huge success.
kinect will have it's haters (even me on occasion), but it does a great job at what it was made for, which is to have fun casual experiences with friends and family. If it wasn't for kinect, some of my funnest gaming memories would have never taken part.

I agree completely with d21lewis. MS almost could have made kinect it's own damn platform from the success its had.

It was intended as a response to the original poster's last point = "But the fact of the matter is it was not able to accomplish its goal. Slow down the Wii and it’s Wii motion plus controller. Two years later all it has to show for itself is slumping Kinect sales, bad games, and a new challenger in the Wii U game pad."

I'll give you one guess who the analyst is. He is infamous for causing steam on forums. I have one of the sources but can't find the other. In a later article he said casuals moving to kinect in 2010 is why he kept predicting wii hd for 2010 and why he thinks wii u is too late. As far as he is concerned casuals now own a hd console with 360 and kinect. So they won't bother with this. Note this is what he said later though he brings up social and smart phone games in this article.

http://www.thatvideogameblog.com/2012/02/29/nintendo-is-toast-pachter-on-wii-u-pricing/?doing_wp_cron

I've tried to find that source but thats the only one I could dig up.

No man, I mean REAL analyst. Not Patcher, he is a clown. I mean people who are actually right at least half the time, not forum celebs.

And the last part of that post was so nonsensical I didnt even take it seriously

The Kinect is not being integrated with hardcore games properly. Their implementation is gimmicky and unwarranted.

I always thought of this idea: A game where your character has the ability to use telekinesis or produce shields with his hands, but to "activate" the kinect you have to press and hold LT on the controller and do the movements with your right hand.

They need start thinking something along those lines, but also should not forget to create control schemes for non-kinect users for the same games.

double post.

Wii motion plus came out a full year and a few months before the PlayStation Move rippoff!

What Microsoft did very successfully was to sell people on the potential of Kinect. Remember that infamous promotional video with the kid scanning his skateboard and the girl trying on clothes virtually? Borderline deceptive but also very clever. People were thinking that this kind of thing would be in the near future for the Kinect device.

The reality is much more mundane. It turns out that Microsoft was unable to evolve the current version very much though software. Some of the ideas they got people excited over, it turns out Kinect sucks at. They just weren't able to do these things without causing frustration, which is the bane of entertainment. However, there are some things Kinect does very well, such as dance and fitness games, and I think that was the saving grace for the device.

The bigger picture, the space they want Kinect to dominate, is the concept of Xbox + Kinect taking over the home entertainment area for the entire family, not just people who want to play games. That's the market Microsoft is after. Not the core, not the casuals, but everyone. Microsoft identifies four kinds of Xbox customers: the core, the connected, the family-timers, and the dabblers. And they want them all.

Kinect kind of fizzled with this generation, but I have no doubt that it will be a very big centerpiece for Microsoft next gen. Honestly, I kind of believe this version was sort of a throwaway version, a test release on a system nearing the end of its life-cycle, with real market penetration planned with the Nextbox release.

The question is, will they succeed? Will non-gamers buy Kinect v2.0 just to control their television? Will they improve game-play enough that core gamers will see Kinect titles as 'must own'? Will Kinect be a big part of the future of 'home entertainment consoles'?

I think Kinect is mostly shit but I also see it as a first gen tech which will get much better and realise it's true potential later on with much more technically advanced versions down the line. MS was kidding core gamers that they could make it work for them, it was definitely aimed at the casual Wii crowd..

This is a good post. Kinect has potential, i just don't know how much of that potential is valid for gaming.

The crueler response here would also be that Microsoft doesn't "Get" the role of a first-party publisher.