I might be looking at the Kinect with rose-tinted glasses, but bringing depth and camera-based pose tracking to the masses in 2010 is pretty impressive.

Sure they were chasing the Wii, but they did try to innovate on the hardware and capability front, and back then VR was nascent, but investing in this area for gaming made sense then (it was very easy to imagine VR games being the 'next big thing').

Unlike Nintendo, Microsoft couldn't really figure out good and fun gameplay for Kinect. Basically only dancing games took advantage of it well IMO?

And some sports games, which is where it seems clear they just wanted their own Wii Sports.

Not so much the game itself so much as the excuse for the masses to buy a console for a game even grandpa can play.