The Power On: The Story of Xbox videos have made for a truly remarkable insight into the history of Xbox, and has touched on the beginning of the brand, all the way to how the Red Ring of Death came about on onwards In the recent episode named after the Red Ring, the documentary touched on the Nintendo Wii, the Kinect, and motion gaming as a whole, and looked at how the impact of the Wii "turned the world upside down".
During the episode, Xbox boss Phil Spencer recalled how the announcement of the Wii led Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to put pressure on the Xbox leadership to discover and create a way to jump onto the trend of motion gaming, while also doing something that was unique.
"I remember Bill putting a lot of pressure on the Xbox leadership team, 'how did we miss motion gaming, what can we do to catch up?'"
Following this, the decision came about to create a system where people could play video games without actually needing to learn or use a controller, and hence the Kinect and its full body motion capture system, which used infrared technology and depth mapping was born.
You can take a look at the portion of the episode that revolves around the Kinect here, which shows how the system launched to massive success, even if it has since struggled to attract fans and was even discontinued in the later stages of the Xbox One generation.