Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect is the Hottest Product of the Holidays

Microsoft's Xbox 360 gaming system turned 5 years old on Thanksgiving week with little fanfare. That is because Microsoft has been celebrating all month with the success of the Xbox Kinect, the motion sensor that turns the user's entire body into the controller. In one 10 day period Microsoft sold 1 million Kinects and says it is on pace to sell 5 million over the holiday season.

So how did the Xbox 360 become one of the hottest products of the holiday season, when history tells us it should be packing up for the retirement community? Microsoft saw the trends, figured out what consumers they still needed to reach, and came up with an answer. Moore's Law, in short, that electronics double in power every two years, no longer applied to video game systems.
 Ever since the first Nintendo Entertainment System was released in 1983, each generation of gaming console has lasted for approximately five years before it was replaced by a vastly superior product. It was easy to recognize the difference between the side-scrolling two-dimensional graphics of the Super Nintendo in 1990, and the three-dimensional worlds of the Nintendo 64 in 1996.

Today, the graphics of the Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 are already so advanced, that five years later, technology has not been able to produce a device that could leapfrog them in the same way.
Microsoft recognized that the consumer video game market had reached a tipping point, and now instead of withering away in old age, Xbox 360 is celebrating a rebirth. Don Mattrick, the president of the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft has stated, "Kinect transforms entertainment and introduces Xbox 360 to millions of new people — families, friends and people of all ages." Microsoft saw a way to open up an old product to a whole new market of consumers, and Kinect became the must-have item this holiday season. 
A (Virtual) Leg Up on the Competition (or Giving the Competition the (Virtual) Finger)

Nintendo introduced motion controlled gaming with the Wii in 2006, and family-friendly games like Wii Sports launched the system to the top of the gaming world. The Wii uses a rectangular remote controller with an accelerometer and a sensor bar with LEDs and infrared detection. The result is a controller that tracks users' arm movements in 3D space, and it created an exciting and unique gaming experience.

The novelty of watching your cartoon avatar bowl and play tennis with your actual arm motions was paired with adding motion elements to Nintendo staples such as Super Mario Bros., and made Wii an incredibly popular holiday buy.
 While Wii was perfect for families and casual gamers, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 were targeted towards more serious gamers with adult themed titles such as the shooters' Call of Duty and Halo driving sales. With the traditional timelines showing this generation of gaming system reaching the limits of its life-span, it was not surprising that Sony and Microsoft both looked to add something new to reinvigorate the brand, and reach into the casual gaming market.