The creation of Kinect can be seen as something of a turning point in the history of Xbox; it marked a change in direction for the brand, and influenced how the Xbox One turned out.

If Kinect had never happened, and Xbox's focus and approach remained the same as it was prior to 2010, how do you think gaming history would have changed compared to how things went historically?

360 would have done worse. By quite a decent amount I’d imagine. Kinect was a second wind of sorts. In turn Wii might’ve done a bit better because of that. For Xbox One things would get more interesting. Assuming there also wouldn’t be a Kinect 2, it means XBox One’s launch would have one less blunder to deal with. It might have actually sold a bit better as well. I don’t think by much though, but a little less negativity wouldn’t have hurt. Things would level out into how it is in reality by the current generation though, because in the end Kinect was a fad anyway.

Also, we would have been blessed by living in a galaxy where Kinect Star Wars didn’t exist. The dumbest, stupidest and lamest thing I have ever seen. The only game that actively pissed me off just by looking at it. That made 1-2 Switch’s cow milking thing look like an art masterpiece.

Better question. What if kinect and eyetoy/PS4 camera succeeded to the point we have a mandatory camera stuck in our face every gaming session, even single player games 🤔

It might have hurt Xbox360 sales abit.
However, Xbox One sales would likely have been alot better.

The combination of Kinect, Xbox 360 Slim, and continued non-Kinect games for 360 all led to Xbox 360 selling so many units. I'm pretty confident the total of 85.73 million units of Xbox 360 goes down to 70-76 million if Kinect never existed. People would still buy 360 for the software and Xbox Live, but Kinect wouldn't be there to add to the appeal. PS3 might even hit 90 million lifetime in this case, or a bit more. Wii probably sells a few million more and surpasses PS1 slightly.
Xbox One is in a better spot. It would retail for the same price as PS4 at launch and would probably sell millions of more units. I don't think it's hitting 70 million, but it could hit 65 million units or more. Kinect was an issue with Xbox One, but PS4 was just firing on all cylinders.
I really don't know how it all affects Series X/S. Maybe they do a little better too because of Xbox One selling better in this alternate scenario.

Well, the 360 actually won that gen in the US. If they don't change gears, I could see that system possibly winning the whole gen. If not, it certainly would have finished a close second behind the Wii. The 360 was Microsoft's one single success story with a horrible last chapter.

As mentioned the 360 would sell worse. I don't think the difference would've been that significant but less than 80m for it could've happened and if it means they don't screw up big time with the Xbox One launch by keeping the focus on the games and making it much closer in power to the PS4 to where multiplats are basically identical between them then the Xbox One could've reached 70m and the Xbox Series probably wouldn't be fading into irrelevance right now. The Kinect helped out Xbox for a couple years but man did it do a lot of damage long term. The tech was cool though and I'd like to see it get brought back in some way since with it being nearly 15 years old surely a new version of it would be way better.

If Don was in charge he would still fuck it up somehow. If he was fired for some other fuckup and they again passed it to Phil. We're back where we are now.

It depends.

If the resources that went into Kinect and Kinect games had been put into a better late gen line-up, 360 sales might have been the same or at least put the XBox One in a much better spot. The blue ocean turned out to be a fickle one.

PS3 knocked it out the park at the end of its generation getting more core 360 players, not interested in Kinect, to get a PS3 alongside.

Kinect hurt XBox long term for a quick cash grab. The tech was cool, the games were not and had many issues. Kinect 2 improved the lag and precision but it was too late already and still wasn't convincing anyone playing video games without buttons had a future. The 'casuals' moved on to the next thing while Kinect had its stigma of bad games. Fable the Journey, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor, Kinect Star Wars, etc. Dance games worked best, but Just Dance simply worked on anything, Kinect wasn't really needed.


On the other hand, without Kinect, PS Move might have had much less success and PSVR1 would perhaps not have happened. Kinect marketing did further popularize motion gaming. (for a while)

I actually still use Kinect for Xbox One/Xbox 360 voice commands.
Wish I could have it on my Xbox Series X still... Or at-least a Microphone built into the controller for THAT specific piece of functionality.

I didn't care for any other aspect of it however.