http://www.cultofmac.com/67951/how-apple-almost-got-microsof...
- did the product design and put it into a friendly package (take apart a Kinect some day, they did some neat stuff in there)
- developed the body tracking algorithm (http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/145347/BodyPartRecognitio...).
- developed the microphone array, speech recognition algorithms
- provided developers the resources they needed to take advantage of the device
- applied it well to gaming and quickly brought it to market
- put the technology in the hands of millions, triggering even more innovation
- OpenNI requires a calibration pose, while the technique Microsoft uses allows players to walk in and out of the frame. Kinect would not have succeeded if people had to calibrate it all the time.
- Microsoft does predictive analysis so it's much better in non-optimal environments (e.g. a living room) or in cases where it loses track of a body part because it's behind something.
- Also. To train it. Microsoft generated and processed millions of depth images from mocap data taken of people of all sorts of different shapes in sizes in all sorts of environments. It's insane. And of course they needed new algorithms to manage that...
- Lastly - no audio/speech or 3D facial expression tracking in NITE
Just because it was purchased doesn't meant they haven't helped push the technology forward, either in pure R&D or by just promoting adoption.