Kinect hardware sales boost is "bollocks"

Don McCabe, the outspoken manager of UK independent retailer CHIPS, firmly believes that Kinect won't boost hardware sales for Microsoft.

"In some ways Microsoft has missed the boat," he told GamesIndustry.biz. "Over the last two years the casual market has been declining rapidly."

"I don't think it's going to add any new hardware sales. I spotted in their last response to a survey, they said it would lift hardware sales by 5 to 15 percent.

"I think that's bollocks," he added. "You lift it by one or two per cent and you've had a result."

McCabe thinks the £130 asking price for Kinect is too high, particularly when compared with Wii - and he's not convinced anyone's that bothered about Microsoft's new device to begin with.

"The pricing is immature to a certain degree," he said. "Consumers see it as just a catch-up with the Wii, but they don't see it as much of an improvement.

"When you see a new hardware product or a new peripheral, you normally see quite a response from the public. We're not seeing that, they're completely underwhelmed by it, really."

McCabe's certain that Microsoft is testing the water for a future generation of consoles. If Kinect flies, great; if it doesn't, "we'll still intergrate it in the next machine".

Mr CHIPS is convinced that hardware for Microsoft is just a "means" of getting people subscribed to Xbox Live.

Still, if Kinect does fly, McCabe will be happy, because like a boomerang the device is coming straight back.

"From our point of view, the more Microsoft things that are out there the better, because it's one of those things that people will buy, play it for a short time then trade it back in. So I think we'll make a good trade-in market on it," predicted McCabe.

There is no UK release date yet for Kinect, but there are various ways to buy it.