Analyst: Kinect Isn’t Microsoft’s Mass-Market Saviour

With Microsoft obviously aiming to attract a large casual market with their upcoming motion control breakthrough in the form of Kinect, many people are wondering if they will actually be able to do exactly that. Well market analyst DFC Intelligence is doubting Microsoft’s ability to attract that casual market. In their latest report they commented that Microsoft had previously tried and failed, the report said;

“The Xbox 360 clearly needs to diversify beyond the core first-person shooter audience,” it reads. “Microsoft is putting almost all its eggs into the Kinect as a way to appeal to the casual consumer and expand its user base. Of course, Microsoft has been trying to do this for some time. Unfortunately, based on what we have seen, DFC continues to feel that Microsoft is going to struggle to expand beyond its core audience.”

DFC believes Microsoft’s biggest problem is the simple fact they just aren’t an entertainment company, and every time Microsoft has tried to emulate previously successful entertainment products they have failed. And in this case they’re obviously walking the path the Nintendo Wii laid a couple of years ago.

DFC even brought Viva Pinata into their case, commenting that Microsoft is brilliant at following technology trends and incorporating that into their products, but haven’t had such luck in their entertainment exploration, DFC said:

“Take for example the Viva Piñata product, developed by Rare and released in November 2006 to compete with the release of the Wii and PlayStation 3. Viva Piñata followed along the lines of Nintendo’s wildly successful Pokemon franchise, with a little Animal Crossing thrown in. Like Pokemon, Viva Piñata had its own television series designed to drive kids to the game and vice versa. Microsoft even worked with 4Kids Entertainment to produce the show. 4Kids was the producer behind Pokemon. Viva Piñata was a well reviewed title, but has gone down as an obscure footnote in the game industry. It clearly did nothing to establish the Xbox 360 with the core Nintendo audience.”

I personally agree. Microsoft did a great job with the Xbox 360, but I see the Kinect failing and in a spectacular fashion at that.

[Source: MCV]

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  • http://www.poisonmushroom.org David Oxford

    Does 4Kids technically count as the producer of the Pokemon TV show? It came from Japan, after all; 4Kids just translated and sanitized it for an American audience, it’s not as though they built it from the ground up, as they would have needed to for Viva Pinata.

    (Their TMNT series was excellent for the first several years, though, not to mention Turtles Forever.)

  • Klatu Berata Nicto

    So let me get this straight. There are more Wii’s in homes than xboxes and PS3′s. That market imparticular is what you might call “saturated”. So, MS decides to appeal to a “saturated” market, thereby alienating it’s core demographic, with a peripheral that costs as much as the console itself? What? Really? Who is driving this clown car? Not to mention the humdrum lineup of launch titles, essentially Wii-game clones, not a “Madworld” or “Red Steel” among them. Okay, they had a star wars game, but it looked ultra cheesy, and rumored to be a “rail” game. Meh. Bryce, I agree %100. It will fail in epic fashion. Ryan Moore will be flipping burgers by next January.

  • neko

    i guess you feel pretty stupid now, 5 months later. with the kinect being such a hit

    • Bryce Wilson

      Yeah I feel stupid for reporting someone elses article and adding my own opinion. Wait until 2011 and a year since Kinect launch, and I assure you it wont be selling as fast as it is now. This is just install sales, hardly a measure for long term success.

  • Menard

    Of course it wont be selling as fast one year later, duh!! But it will continue to sell like hotcakes.

    Just so that you know, I just bookmarked this page so I can tell you one year later how really stupid your opinion was about the device.