Xbox Gets Slim, Natal Becomes Kinect

[Xantar]

If these numbers are deeply underwhelming, I can see Sony and Microsoft making motion control take a back seat to controller gaming.

And that there is the problem. The numbers will be deeply underwhelming, but not because of how well Kinect works or doesn't work or how much people are intrigued by it. As three separate people have been trying to point out to you now, the price is too high, the timing is too late, and the support is too little. When Kinect fails, how is Microsoft supposed to know whether that means they should include it in the Xbox 4Pi or not? There is no such thing in business as finding some kind of "absolute bottom" number and then extrapolating from that to figure out how well something would sell if you actually developed it properly. The math does not allow you to separate out the factors like that. There is no math formula that says, "If Kinect sells 100,000 units, that means it will sell 5 million if you built a console from the ground up to include it." Any economist will tell you that.

This makes zero percent chance from a business standpoint. Developing a product and releasing it with the expectation that it will fail is a horrible way to do business. Just try selling that pitch to some venture capital investors in Silicon Valley. The only thing Microsoft is getting out of this is PR, and now it's starting to sound like they'll fail at even that because the Kinect won't live up to the hype and will utterly fail to sell.

But hey, if you think it's such a good tactic, go buy some Microsoft stock. I'll be happy to short sell against you.