I'll never understand why Microsoft insisted on bundling Kinect with every console. I don't see how it is central to any sort of service or vision that MS have across its products. Hell, most of the adverts for the XB1 I see centre around the benefits of voice control than motion sensing, why not bundle the console with a $1 microphone?
Still, we're 3 months into a generation, plenty of time to get stuff sorted. I hope they do, the industry needs competition.
MS never got into consoles just to deliver a game console and make some low margin hardware money and some software money. It was always a bigger play with the initial focus on games only the Trojan Horse to get into the running.
XB1 (particularly as initially announced) is representative of their true direction and is informed both by their on-going goal to try and get into closed gate services/devices for consumers and their long stated goal to use such a device to "own the living room".
Kinect started following from Wii motion controls but was clearly always more about an input mechanism than something for games only. With XB1 the goal was clearly to have you use Kinect as your primary interaction mechanism to control the console and via the console all your media content and services as well as aimed at popular stuff such as fitness, dance and motion control mini-game titles like Kinect Sports.
The XB1 is the way it is because in the end MS isn't really that interested in the games other than as a means to an end (not that there aren't and haven't been many very pro-games folks in the Xbox division over the years who I think did try and make it much more about the games or even all about the game - but at the higher exec levels the games were just a sidebar to the main event which was owning the living room and their goals were always going to overturn the videogame centric folks in the end).
Personally I believe MS vision for Xbox and the living room has vanished on them in terms of large, global demographics actually wanting such as device - although from what I understand there is perhaps a core demographic in US where the media element makes sense plugging in a cable box - and the console has been left looking like a decent (but inferior to direct competition PS4) games console with a still strong online infrastructure, a few notable but small in number exclusives and an uncertain strategic direction or future with a competitor that for the most part is now offering an identical gaming service and a superior piece of gaming hardware.
Just dumping Kinect won't change the rest of the device or the underlying design - and going forward the question is going to be is MS really interested in just games if the market shows the bigger demand now is for a pure gaming console as part of a family of distributed devices (tablets, TV, Smart TV, smartphones, etc) or do they think there is a viable way to still go after "owning the living room" and a viable role for Xbox in their broader strategy?
A lot will be riding on PS4 and XB1 sales, particularly in US, as well as how many XB1 owners just turn it on to play games vs the percentage using it as intended as their single "all in one" box in line with MS greater vision.
But what confuses me is that so far most of the advertisements I've seen here in the UK have revolved around people playing games whilst utilising voice control and Skyping with friends. With that in mind, why bundle such an expensive solution, when a basic webcam/mic combo could do all that? Kinect just feels like a very expensive answer to a question that its core audience weren't asking (although as you say, content providers/partners may well have).