Ahead of the launch of Microsoft's Kinect next week, market research firm Ipsos said that the body-scanning camera for Xbox 360 will be "the big game winner for [the] U.S. 2010 holiday season" when compared to rival new control device, Sony's PlayStation Move.
Ipsos recently polled consumers and found that "it will be a close fight" between Move and the Kinect. But Ipsos said that Microsoft's new control solution will be the commercial victor.
Kinect beat the Move in two important areas -- uniqueness and believability, the firm said. The research showed that consumers rated the Kinect's uniqueness at 3.6 out of five.
Forty-four percent of those polled ticked the most positive survey answer for Kinect's believability -- or consumers' belief that the product would actually work. PlayStation Move scored 3.0 and 29 percent in the respective categories.
Eleven percent of consumers polled said they intended to purchase the Move, while 13 percent said they planned to buy Kinect. Ipsos did not release information on Nintendo's Wii, instead just comparing new controllers.
"While there are a lot of factors other than consumer appeal that influence demand, the underlying potential for Xbox Kinect looks very good," said Ipsos in a statement.
As the November 4 launch date approaches for the Kinect, Ipsos said that Microsoft's marketing should remain focused on the key factor that differentiates the camera from other control devices, in that it requires no controller at all.
Microsoft's Kinect ads do revolve around that concept with the company's "You Are the Controller" campaign. "Needlessly adding more messages around features and applications may result in the dilution of the critical consumer communication," Ipsos said.
The firm also found that the "Buzz Power" of Kinect was above average when the marketing message focused on "no controller required," but the buzz dropped to below average among survey respondents when marketing tried to communicate all of the device's features.
"The strength of Kinect lies in its simplicity of use," Ipsos said. "...If Microsoft can keep its communications simple and single-minded, it looks to have the lead in next generation controllers."
