[Xantar]

Originally Posted by Typhoid

Name me 1 peripheral over 100 dollars released on a 4 year old system.

Well yeah. Now that I think about it, there haven't been very many peripherals costing over $100 released that late into a console's life cycle, have there? It seems like a really stupid idea for some reason. If I cut that down to 3 years, then you'd have the Sega CD which I'll get to in a moment.

When did I say it will succeed 100% with flying colours, sell millions, and change the industry? All I've said is that you need to keep an open mind that it might not fail terribly - and that from a business and marketing standpoint what they're doing makes perfect, practical sense.

Think about the amount of money in research, development, and marketing that went into creating the Move and Kinect. And then consider that they are probably being sold at a loss. But even if we assume they are being sold at a profit, think about how many units are going to have to be sold to make up all that money. I know you don't have actual numbers, but just come up with some ball park figures for a second.

Now, do you think Microsoft and Sony would be happy with about 10% of current console owners being motion controls? Because historically, that is the absolute ceiling. No console peripheral (including the ones you've named which I'll get to in a bit) has done better than that. Somehow I got the impression that Microsoft and Sony are hoping for better than that.

And the thing is, when something has sold so little, people are going to stop paying attention to it within a year. So that's not good from a business OR a marketing standpoint.

Sega CD

You think that was a success?

Famicom

Hang on. The Famicom was a peripheral? You'll have to tell me which machine you're talking about because the only Famicom I know is a full-fledged console.

Super Game Boy

You think that sold well?

Super Game Boy 2

You think that sold well?

The N64 Expansion Pack

You think that sold well? Have you taken a look at sales numbers for N64 games that required the Expansion Pak?

And if you want to get technical, Playstation.

Umm...no.

And anyway, I thought I didn't have to keep repeating the "$100" part of my question over and over again because it was implied. You don't really think the Expansion Pak is in any way a reasonable comparison to Kinect and Move, do you? Just look at the marketing for Kinect and Move. Did you ever see that amount of hype for the Expansion Pak? Really? And it's also worth noting that with the exception of the Expansion Pak, all of the peripherals you've listed are ones which disappeared from store shelves within a year of being launched. You call that a success?

Things change. You have a black president. When has that happened before? Show me one black president before Obama.

This may blow your mind, but some things do happen when no previous thing has happened that is the same. Am I saying these will take off amazingly? Again - no. I am not. I am simply saying it makes sense, and that it may not crash and burn.

Seriously? Your argument in favor of Move is "I think these other peripherals sold well (even though when you look at the raw numbers they didn't) and anything could happen because the United States has a black president"? Do I even have to tell you how ludicrous this looks?

In point of fact, it's much easier to get Barack Obama elected president than it is to get Move or Kinect to sell well. Not to take anything away from him, because it certainly wasn't easy, but demographic and historical trends say that it was inevitable that we would have a black US president some day. There is nothing which says some day we must inevitably have a peripheral which launches four years into a console's life cycle and costing almost 50% of the console's retail price and ends up succeeding by any reasonably measure.

I'm not even going to try to list all the other ways your comparison doesn't hold up. It's making me laugh too hard.

Yes, but some might. That is the business outlook of it.
They aren't releasing anything for 2+ years. Nothing but games.

I'm trying to understand what exactly is so bad about that. The Playstation 2 did just fine for 6 years releasing "nothing but games."

In order to bring in more money, without releasing a new system, what do you do? Revamp the current one, so that more games can be made in a shorter amount of time. Not every single person has to buy a Kinect or a Move for it to be a success. Maybe to you, it does. But not to a company. If they pull a profit at all, it's a business success.

Setting aside the fact that I don't think it either Kinect or Move will make a profit, your standard for success is so low that it's ludicrous to think Microsoft or Sony think the same way you do. So let's say Kinect costs Microsoft $100 million and they end up making $110 million off of it. That's what you would consider a success? Because I guarantee you Microsoft isn't going to be happy with that. They'll be the first to tell you they want more than just a 10% profit margin. They want to steal Nintendo's thunder. They've admitted it right up front.

And by that standard, they will fail because by this time in 2012, we'll have completely forgotten about Kinect (and Move).

Now 100-140 dollars isn't a lot of money - especially when it comes to video games and video game related things.

First of all, at the assertion that $140 isn't a lot of money.

Secondly, that actually is a lot of money to spend on something when the support for that device is going to disappear about a year after you buy it. Which is what happened to almost every peripheral in the past (and you could even say the same thing happened to the Expansion Pak because compared to the Playstation, how many people were really paying attention to it?).

Even you have to acknowledge there's a risk that the Move will fail to gain any traction and that consequently developers will refuse to make any games to support it, leaving you with an expensive webcam and light bulb.

That's the same price as 2 games. And if your child has a PS3/360, and his/her little birthday is coming up - and if they want something with motion control - you can either spend 200+ on a Wii, or 150 on a Kinect/Move. Will everyone buy a Kinect or Move? Fuck no. At no point have I ever said that.

Ah yes, the mythical child who somehow convinced his parents to buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 for him and now wants motion control for some reason. Do you have any hard data on how many of those are around?

You want to know why I'm still not open to the idea that the Kinect or the Move might sell in any amounts that anybody would consider successful? Because not only has it never happened, I've never seen anything to support the idea that it might. And the only thing you've given me so far is a list of peripherals which didn't actually do that well (go ahead, look them up), a hypothetical kid, and "Barack Obama is president, so anything can happen."

Really, I don't know why I just spent this much time rebutting this argument. I must be bored.