Creating an uncontested market space does not mean intentionally not trying to compete with the competition like you're trying to paint the link you posted doesn't back this as it is essentially just saying carve out your own niche even which both companies did if you want to try and argue the book's definition then it contradicts you even more because casuals were already around long before Wii and DS and had many games aimed at them already this goes against the "Untainted by competition" and "Unknown Market Space" part. Under these notions no platform is blue ocean but ofcourse we're not using the exact pure definition in gaming's context here as we're looking more at this part "reconstructing market boundaries" and "focusing on the big picture".

Carving out your own niche is competing by ways of fostering a unique following or approach it's by no means intentionally not competing so no you still haven't debunked anything here. Splatoon is an example of the context of use in gaming as the are many shooters around but none like it meaning it has carved out it's own space with in the genre even though the are many shooters out there competing for fans of the genre, it's niche is uncontested by definition in the genre but it still competes with the competition.

Dude.  Give it up.  You haven't read the book and have no idea what it actually says.  You are just making things worse at this point.

I'm truly lost why.  Is it hate for Kinect so they don't want to give it any credit?  I just don't get it.

I'm truly lost why.  Is it hate for Kinect so they don't want to give it any credit?  I just don't get it.

Cant be. I hate kinect and am willing to give it credit.

If I may add some anecdotal evidence, I knew nobody who was a non-gamer that bought a 360 just to have Kinect. Also, I worked at GameStop in 2011 during the height of Kinect's popularity. I do not recall any such enthusiasm from periphery demographics over the Kinect. Granted, it was a short-term job and my tenure didn't extend into the holidays, but still, I saw nothing to suggest that hordes of casuals and non-gamers were slavering over Kinect.

And to offer some more concrete data, the Kinect did well itself, but most of the games released for it did not. There were a small handful of games for it that attained over a million in sales, but certainly nowhere near as many copies as Kinect units. And it's not like it's only casuals that play party games. I imagine the Venn diagram of "casual" and "hardcore gamers" would overlap in a non-trivial area labeled "people that play party games." Furthermore, the Kinect had utilitarian value beyond just playing those party games. To once again offer some anecdotal evidence, I do know people who already owned a 360 and bought a Kinect both to have a fun party game to sit on the shelf between copies of CoD and Halo, but also because it was a neat new gadget that had voice, facial, and gesture recognition abilities. Eventually, the novelty wore off, but at the time it seemed cool.

In short, the idea that the Kinect could have been bought predominantly by regular console gamers, with non-gamers forming a relatively negligible portion of Kinect sales, is perfectly plausible.

Did you not see my charts from the other day? The 360 was already resurgent in 2010 when the 360 S was released. The Kinect did not appear to provide any additional boosts outside of giving November a better YoY boost than what September and October got. And the 360 was only up 7.7% YoY in 2011, with nearly all of that boost coming from the Jan.-May period as that was the period in 2010 before the 360 S was released. The June-Dec. period of 2011 was up only about one percent YoY.

In Europe, sales of the 360 were actually nearly flat in 2011, and in Japan is was down quite considerably.

Considering the 360 was already almost at 60M by time the Kinect was released, I somehow doubt it was trending towards only 60M lifetime. As mentioned, the 360 already had life injected into it with the S model, with the only obvious additional boost coming from Kinect being in Nov. 2010.

Also, you do mention the obvious corollary of "The Kinect was the main thing responsible for good 360 sales in 2011," that being "Without the Kinect, the 360's sales would have suffered in 2011." Well, there's no evidence that would have been the case, either. Slimline models clearly exhibited their capacity to produce substantial long-term boosts to sales, regardless of whether they're concurrent with a price drop or not.

And I already mentioned the Kinect's effect on sales outside the U.S. earlier.

Oh, and PS Move had no measurable impact on PS3 sales. Even in Japan where sales are tracked weekly, there wasn't any obvious bump the week of or following the PS Move's release.

Are you sure? It's far from implausible. If we submit that the GameCube was a "conventional" console (i.e., a more or less conventional standard gamepad, comparable power to the PS2 & Xbox, and a significant overlap with them in terms of third-party titles), then comparing the PS2 and 360's shares of conventional console market during the generation proper shows that the 360 was quite dominant, comparable to the PS2' dominance.

I do have to point out that the PS2 had no real competition for most of 2001, while in 2006 the GameCube and especially Xbox simply cratered. Likewise, the 360 was by its lonesome for the first ten months of 2006, hence the large percentages in those years.

In any case, the 360 dominated the PS3 just as the PS2 dominated the GC & Xbox, aside from a couple of brief periods for both where the competition narrowed the gap. In addition to large plurality or majority market shares during Gen 6 proper, the PS2 managed large lifetime numbers by having strong legs well into Gen 7. Meanwhile, the 360 managed its large lifetime numbers mainly during the generation proper, which was a protracted generation in general, but one with weaker legs.

In short, the 360 managed to bust the 40M mark simply by besting the PS3 by a considerable margin. It had a year's head start to further add to its total (though that's not why it beat the PS3, as head starts never seem to matter much), and it had strong market share of the conventional console market (which was just it and the PS3). It's late peak and its strong sales in that peak appear to be due primarily to the 360 S, as I've explained before. The Kinect was not totally inconsequential, and had a short-term impact on sales, but I do not see anything in the data to suggest it was the primary factor for the 360's success from Nov. 2010 onward.

I think that's it, people dont want to admit something "casual" was responsible for such large sales.

A big problem with this post is at the beginning you talk about a large amount of hardcore gamers that play party games are who bought Kinect but later on exclude Wii from your marketshare comparison when going by your previous statement a whole bunch of Wii sales should consist of hardcore gamers who also like party games since Wii was the ultimate party game system.

Why is Kinect considered a novel device played by hardcore gamers but Wii is considered a novel device played only by casuals? Also why are you assuming that PS2 didnt have a large amount of casual gamers? The entire PS2 vs 360 marketshare part just doesnt make any sense.

June-December 2011 being up YoY actually supports that Kinect was moving hardware. PS3 Slim released in Sept 2009 and look at the huge YoY decline in Sept-Dec 2010 compared to Sept-Dec 2009.