The other night my dad, a Baby Boomer who has been having back problems, was telling me about some exercises his doctor had suggested to him, and a Kinect commercial came on TV. In the commercial, a 40-something lady was sliding around her living room, saying, "Boy I'm loving this Kinect." My dad pointed at the screen and said, "That's what I need: a Wii."And he went on to tell me about a friend of his at work who bought Wii Fit and thinks it's awesome.

Now I'm not suggesting for a second that he wants a PS3 or is interested in Move. In fact, he knows I have a PS3 and thinks it's a ridiculous waste of time and money. And to him it would be, because he's not a gamer and he doesn't own any Blurays. That's not the point. My point is that Kinect, with party/fitness games and Avatars leading the charge, seems to have blurred the line between itself and Wii to such a degree that the casual audience can't even tell the difference. But even the casual audience still knows what a Wii is, and they either have one and don't use it or kind of want one so they can host Wii Bowling parties for their work friends.

I initially figured that Kinect would sell boatloads with Microsoft's relentless and formidable advertising budget behind it, but now I wonder. Kinect may be nestled so firmly into Wii's shadow that it will be invisible to its target audience.

"my dad, a Baby Boomer who has been having back problems.
"

I assume you enjoyed the description and not the fact that my father has back pain. :) And in that case, thanks!

Hmmm.... Sounds like your dad's just stupid.
 
I kid, I kid.
 
Seriously though, they've separated themselves as far as they possibly can from the Wii. Any lack of brand recognition is an iPod situation, they have had such a monopoly on the market so long that the layman calls any type of mp3 player an iPod.

Interestingly I can back up that anecdote with one of my own. I was watching TV with my folks the other day and they told me to watch the part of the show that was "after the Wii commercial." I went through the whole show once before realizing they meant a Kinect commercial.

This is an interesting thought.  Even if people aren't confused in this way, it could funnel a lot of sales to the Wii at stores that are sold out of Kinects or from buyers who balk at the price of a 360+Kinect.

Kinect will sell. How much it will sell is dependent on how far it can utilise it's uniqueness as a truly controller-less form of input. This thing has just come out and it's going to take some time before people figure out exactly how to make games work on it in an original way. I believe only once developers figure out how to do with Kinect what they couldn't do with the Wii, will it have a chance of surpassing the Wii.

Old people don't understand new fangled technology and confuse technical terms, news at 11

That's the market these people are tapping into: one with no brand loyalty. They'll pickup whatever is reccomended to them by a friend, and then they only buy two games for the damn thing. To these guys, there might as well be one console in the world. Perfect example: I want mario kart 64 for xmas one year, my parents got me the SNES version. Shit's just confusing if you're not in the know.