8 Biggest Xbox Risks (That Totally Backfired)
6. The Kinect
The Wii drew in a massive audience of people who would otherwise never consider themselves gamers. As such, it was easy to predict that both Sony and Microsoft would take their own chances to put pies out on the windowsill in hope to attract some of these people dipping their toes into electronic entertainment.
And in concept and in (most) demonstrations, the Xbox Kinect was an exciting and futuristic bit of kit. Heavy marketing for the peripheral billed "you" as the controller and positioned it as this Star Trek level technology that you could control with your voice.
It doesn't matter that the games for it were horrible, the Kinect did numbers. Hell, the Xbox 360's best seller isn't Halo 3 or GTA V, it's Kinect Adventures!
The problem was that the bubble of mainstream interest would burst eventually and that it did, leaving no one but the core gaming audience behind. Already feeling side-lined, they were ignored yet again. After it's first taste, Xbox was intent on pushing for a larger share of the average living room, and this meant packaging a new Kinect with the Xbox One for the hefty asking price of $499.
This higher price-point was bad enough to drive gamers further away, most of whom didn't want the Kinect to begin with. However, talk that the peripheral needed to stay plugged in raised concerns that the tiny electronic box was listening at all times. The Kinect went from feeling like a dumb gimmick to something genuinely unsettling.
It may have the Guinness World Record for "fastest selling consumer electronics device" but the Kinect's legacy is gamers who felt cast aside for the mainstream and privacy concerns.