[quote name='AquaKnight']honestly, I think Kinect is doomed to bomb for a couple of reasons.
- its hard to not look at this as a copy of the Wii. not trying to be a fanboy here (i don't really like Wii's approach to gaming all that much), but a good number of buyers are going to make that conclusion immediately before their purchases, which means theres a good chance that part of the audience is going to just buy a Wii instead of a Kinect.[/quote]
That's possible.
- on top of that, there are little to no games for Kinect yet. the system is brand new, so we have yet to see how these games will fare. from the ones that I've seen in videos, and read about on xbox enthusiast sites, none of them are particularly impressive, mostly because Wii already did them.
The first ones, that's true. More is coming. Higher ups in Microsoft made a decision about a year ago to launch Kinect directly competing with Wii. That's what the release games do. That's not what is intended forever though.
I have it on authority that Microsoft sort of realizes that they miscalculated with the whole "Wii is the one to beat" angle with the Kinect launch, since the Wii has kind of taken a downturn in popularity over the last year - but it's too late to do anything about and games take time to make.
I know for a fact that 6-12 months ago they were shooting down 'mature' title proposals from various developers (Epic was one, I can't name the other) or titles that use the controller with it. But I also know that they will be changing those plans soon, if they haven't already (look at the TGS Kinect game announcements).
- Kinect is $150 for just the equipment. With one game that's already $200. At that point, it seems like its way too much money to spend on a single game. I could understand if games that have the level of quality of Call of Duty: Black Ops or Halo: Reach or Grand Theft Auto 4 were also being released, but none of the launch titles give me that impression.
An awful lot of people spent $150 on single games recently. Rock band? Guitar Hero: World Tour?
- a ton of people (myself included) are quite bitter about JoyRide becoming a pay to play title. Microsoft basically lied to all of us and made us believe it was going to be free for everyone. It may have been Xbox's Mario Kart (enhanced greatly because your avatar gets to participate in the action), but now its going to be a $50 - $60 game that uses Kinect as a poor method of controlling your car. Honestly, it looks like a $10 arcade game, so I don't really think it's going to go far.
I may have just missed it, but I don't think Microsoft has ever said what Joyride will cost or if it will, specifically. But you are most likely right.
tl;dr I do believe that Kinect is a step in the right direction and is excellent technology, but it simply has no support and no market.
I think it will sell better than you think it will, but that will highly depend on how fast they get out other games and games that use regular controllers with it etc.