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Seeing the future requires reading between the lines and imagining. If any of you have developed with the Kinect, (i spent a year on it 2 years ago) it is pretty impressive for a not too expensive piece of hardware.

I think MSFT is doing it right by really working on it, as we all are aware they have had their share of flops.

Putting out a great product specially like kinect is pretty exciting. Oculus is cool but its FB buyout puts it in a strange place and it was years out anyway from general adoption. The kinect is much simpler and cheaper and has already been out on the market which, gives it some validation. Plus, I am not sure how many people will go through the trouble of putting on goggles in wide range adoption. That being said I think simpler devices like the kinect have more mass market appeal, and thus the adoption of devices like kinect will ultimately be instrumental in the success of more complex interfaces like Oculus, etc...

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Kinect has the bad kind of validation though: people are so disinterested in paying for it that Microsoft has unbundled it from the XBox in an effort to stop it from dragging down sales.

http://www.spartanpr.com/xbox-one-kinect-u-turn-the-pr-impac...

"People" here refers more to the hardcore gamers than anything else. Regular folks seem to love playing games designed for it.

Perhaps, but are "regular folks" that inclined to buy an Xbox One just to play a few Kinect games? Sales figures suggest not.

What sales figures? Xbox One without Kinect started to be sold today. I think it's a little early to tell if Kinect was the thing holding all those sales.

If you're comparing sales figures from XboxOne (w/ Kinect) versus PS4 (w/o Move), I think that adds too many variables to be object right now.

Let's see how this thing goes. Good thing is there is more option now. If you don't care about Kinect, you're not forced to buy it anymore. It doesn't change the fact it's an incredible piece of technology.

http://news.xbox.com/2014/05/xbox-delivering-more-choices

First, beginning on June 9th, in all markets where Xbox One is sold, we will offer Xbox One starting at $399. This is a new console option that does not include Kinect.

I think regular folks love the idea of the kinect when they first experience it, but their interest in it fades quickly.
Maybe it's a lack of compelling software, but most "regular" folk that I know use their Kinect as a Dance Central machine. Kind of how most people buy a wii for Wii sports and nothing else.

There are two answers, both in corporate speak advertising, and the other answer being based in reality, to the question of is the xbox a general purpose living room computer appliance or is it a hard core (aka only first person shooters) gamer platform? Nobody really knows.
Observationally "regular folks" play games on their phones, tablets, wii, not xbox, vs "real gamers" have $3000 gamer PCs with gamer mice and multiple $750 graphics cards and overclocked CPUs and water cooling. I guess someone could aim for the non-lucrative market in between...

Regular folks loved Wii too, now look how great WiiU is doing.

Well, looks like regular people do not love the WiiU.
Why would you expect them to buy a completely different design just because they liked something else made by the same company? It's a fact that regular people made the Wii extremely successful, do you really expect more?

>Plus, I am not sure how many people will go through the trouble of putting on goggles in wide range adoption. That being said I think simpler devices like the kinect have more mass market appeal, and thus the adoption of devices like kinect will ultimately be instrumental in the success of more complex interfaces like Oculus, etc...
This got me thinking a lot but I'm not sure things like Kinect will eventually help devices like the Oculus Rift. Case: my girlfriend loves the Kinect i.e. how it will turn on my TV/Xbox with voice commands, sign her in via face recognition and let her navigate to Netflix easily not even having to get out of bed or move. My girlfriend is very non-technical and doesn't care about gadgets like most of us on here do. I couldn't see my girlfriend in a million years wearing a Oculus headset and I'd never hear the end of it if she saw me wearing one...

"I couldn't see my girlfriend in a million years wearing ... and I'd never hear the end of it if she saw me wearing..."
And this is an insightful comment in that the tide seems to be turning anti-kinect, and once the "value is socially constructed by others, not internally" crowd decides as a group that the kinect is embarrassing, its toast in the marketplace unless it can downscale quickly and smoothly which most products can't do.
Occulus can survive while its in growth phase and fashion oriented people don't like it. That's OK, its a big world and there's space for all. But if the kinect org and support system and ecosystem is size "X" and "not being cool anymore" results in a mandatory nearly instant decrease in size by a factor of perhaps 3, that could kill the entire product by having trouble down scaling.
With narrow casting I'm not even sure what "cool people" watch anymore but all you need is some comedians making fun of people using Kinect or maybe some parody commercials during the superbowl or during reality TV or whatever, and that product is simply toast. Watch for that cultural phenomena, and then watch for product discontinued notices six months later.
All that product needs is a sequel of that "40 year old virgin" movie where sony pays for product placement for the main character to use a kinect, or maybe a stoner/teen comedy movie with a kinect in it, and its all over.

Awesome comment and I think totally right. Another great example is Google Glass and "glassholes" or Scoble in the shower and how that intensely negative social image tanked the mainstream appeal of the device in many ways. Sure there were other concerns (privacy, style, etc) but it instantly became very uncool once people were making fun of it on comedy shows, late night TV etc. and it was associated socially with that image.

All your points are true.
However if you were a teen in the 90's i can tell you that girls playing video games was as rare as a gypsy with a mortgage.
Now girls play video games but it was unheard of only a decade ago. Things change, although it takes time but don't be surprised if your son's gf someday will be comfortable with the Oculus.

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