Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral has certainly seemed like a boon for the company and its Xbox business, but what do people in the industry think about its performance and its future
“I think Kinect is now a part of the Microsoft ecosystem, and it’s an integral part,” said Arcadia analyst John Taylor. “You’re doing this story at an interesting time because the new Dashboard and all the stuff they’re doing with Bing is just about to happen. I think that’s going to bring magic to this thing again. This isn’t gaming related. I don’t think Microsoft has to rely on games to drive demand for this. They’re hoping, and I think there’s a good chance that the voice interface, the entertainment search feature that’s going to be built into this thing is going to be a tie-breaker for an awful lot of people. I want to watch a movie but I don’t want to have to wade through 50 pages of menus. If Microsoft can get the thing right, in terms of allowing people access to all that stuff that’s out there, they can win on that basis without needing a game to drive the installed base.”
That’s all well and good, but third parties would like to see Microsoft pushing the Kinect a little harder with better first-party efforts too.
“It’s not healthy to just sell in the holiday, or 90 percent of your units in the holidays. We would really like to see them have some major launches during the non-holiday part of the year,” said Ubisoft’s VP of Marketing Tony Key. “That will help keep the visibility of the machine high and enable better catalog sales throughout the year, and also give us the opportunity to launch some things throughout the year. We put out Michael Jackson: The Experience in April and we would love to continue to have Kinect games come out all year long, but we need support from first-party [Microsoft] also on that front.”
Source: IndustryGamers
