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Comment by thevagrant | Hacker News Reader

I still use Kinect for my young kids. They love it (Xbox One version). My original Kinect broke so I picked up a second hand one for $10 somewhere. I think Microsoft was on the cusp of a huge opportunity and blew it by listening to hardcore gamers. Kinect type accessory that comes with the console (like Xbox One) should have a big market potential. For myself, I only got interested in it once I had kids and by then, Microsoft already had abandoned it thus limiting how many titles I could purchase.

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It wasn’t about hardcore gamers. I think you forgot that the Kinect made the Xbox cost $100 more than the PlayStation. It probably singlehandedly gave Sony the crown for this console generation.

Microsoft eventually dropped the Kinect and the price and sales of the Xbox picked up considerably.

It was bad timing, since the console was released just months after the Snowden reveal, so customers were perhaps justifiably skittish about having an always connected camera in their house when all they wanted was a gaming console.

The hardware in the XBox One is also weaker than the PS4 to compensate for the added expense.

RDR2’s performance/resolution is particularly brutal on XB1 judging by the Digital Foundry video that compares all the systems.

$100 makes a huge difference to a console's sales.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExaAYIKsDBI

psvr sells though.

I guess it's because Xbox had a big hardcore gaming base as oppose to Nintendo, and motion sensing at the level of resolution it is at, is really only capable of casual gameplay. The tech needs to go to the next level, especially in terms of reliability so that hardcore gamers can feel as though they need lots of time to master it.

Makes me wonder if Nintendo had gotten the tech what they would have done with it. Nintendo not only has the more casual audience, but they have the creativity and culture internally to develop compelling gaming experiences with unique technology like that.

They tried it twice, it didn't take off and realistically it never would.

Unless all consoles/pc supported some kind of similar functionality most developers will ignore it because it's just more work for one console that won't actually sell anymore copies.

Yes but the early backlash and signaling from Microsoft probably scared off a lot of developers. A lot of mistakes were made. The costs were also a big factor. Perhaps the flaws with the tech were insurmountable.

I can't help but believe with the same opportunity, using a different approach to market and promote the technology, it would have become a stable accessory with a very big customerbase.

I've had many discussions with parents who are absolutely OK with their kids playing games 'controllerless' but against the idea of their young kids using gaming consoles (couch zombie with controller/other input device). Kinect has physical movement and allows for young children to have fun before they can develop any competent skill or understanding using a controller - this disrupts a common bias parents have against their young kids playing a videogame. Missed opportunity.

Those consoles already existed, the Wii and Wii U, Nintendo moved away from the whole idea. It's a good idea in theory but it didn't catch on and realistically kids just aren't a big enough market to concentrate on in the context of gaming, the average gamer is in their 30's and has a ton of disposable income, those are who the console manufacturers are targetting. If you do want a console for kids, well the Switch exists...

Except they didn’t. JoyCons are detachable from Switch and can be used for gestures. Nintendo recently released Ring Fit Adventure - adventure game that incorporates fitness.

Nintendo integrated some ideas from the Wii into the Switch though, and the whole console market expects to constantly move on to new platforms and new generations of technology.

So while individual consoles can be market successes or failures in their day, the ideas introduced by various consoles are much harder to score.

Didn't catch on? The Wii was Nintendo's best selling console ever (apart from the original Gameboy), and outsold the PS3 from the same generation (and ever Xbox ever). It's quite likely that the Wii is the reason why PS3 was Sony's lowest selling console.

Yes, didn't catch on. Wii had terrible attachment rates, meaning people bought a Wii and Wii Sports or something and then nothing else.

Yeah it didn't catch on. The Wii U bombed, Kinect on xbox bombed and the actual number of games that took advantage of the features in either was pretty low compared to the total games released in those generations.

Wii/kinect is a gimmick that a finite number of good games could take advantage of and once they'd been released there wasn't really anywhere else to go.

It always seemed dumb to me that Kinect wasn’t combined with Windows Mixed Reality to produce full body VR on the XBox.

Maybe we’ll see it next year with the next gen.

They blew it by not listening to hardcore gamers in the first place. By forcing the technology (and still unreasonably high price tag) onto gamers who didn't want it they created a huge backlash. If they'd sold it separately and innovated over time, slowly convincing the gamers who weren't initially interested, eventually they might have gotten somewhere.

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