Correct me if I'm wrong, but that wasn't so much a "Future of Kinect" as it was some background on all the effort it takes to make the Kinect technology work, right?
Damage control regarding the Kinect is everywhere now, including this article. I just saw that the game Destiny is jettisoning Kinect support and because of that, is now playable at a higher resolution. MS is scrambling to make the "Kinect reserve" configurable instead of static. I believe the June update for the Xbox has this functionality, but how many devs will just go, "Who cares" and set it zero just like Bungie did with Destiny? Most I assume, especially if their games play at 720p on Xbox w/ Kinect but 1080p on PS4.
I really think the Kinect is more or less dead and have blogged about it in the past:
http://nothingjustworks.com/microsoft-just-gave-up-on-the-ki...
FWIW, I have the new Xbox with the Kinect and even as a Kinect fan I'm underwhelmed. I also had to disable the voice turn on feature because when its on, the xbox doesn't fully turn off, so a little fan runs 24/7 on the xbox power supply and it makes just enough noise to be annoying when watching TV and movies. In the age of silent tablets and passively cooled devices, a non-stop hum from a fan on a media center device is inexcusable. Couldn't they passively cooled the power supply?
I'm sad to write that "just dance kids edition" equals tears during menu navigation. Works fine during gameplay, its just the wrong UI for anything involving menus or detail work or ... pretty much anything other than dancing.
The fundamental insight of the kinect "problem" is its a transparent interface that people hate about 10% of the time. That sounds great, people love it 90% of the time, right? No, because its transparent, it disappears 90% of the time and all that remains is the boiling cauldron of hate.
As a real world insight into how much people love interfacing with electronics using large motor movements vs pushing buttons on a box, look at how remote controls have completely disappeared from the marketplace and everyone loves changing channels by getting up off the couch and walking around, and its such a great hit of exercise too. Oh wait the marketplace has gone the opposite direction. Yeah that too.
The other part I don't like is Microsoft pays an entire army of astroturfers who have poorly written scripts. Astroturfers should at least show some respect, by not having poorly written scripts. If your astroturfing script looks like a parody of customer support videos or a parody of the wikipedia list of logical fallacies, you're just doin it wrong. Even fanboi trolls are better than bad astroturf scripts.