I think this is because they sell the hardware at a loss, and have to make it up through legitimate game sales. Statements like the above are to keep the shareholders happy with a pretty bad business model. ("We give the actual hardware away, but then rape developers and users with per-game fees. We go out of business if someone breaks the DRM, but that can't happen because we're Microsoft and our DRM is unbreakable.")
While the "sold at a loss" might be true, I've also read some articles that claimed that some of the processing in the kinect hardware was being offloaded into the xbox itself. If true, this means that the drivers will need to replicate some code running on the xbox and Microsoft was rather nasty about researchers reversing some of what went on inside the running hardware.
This sort of attitude (and the business model of Draconian control over third-party developers) is unfortunately, endemic in the console gaming industry, harmful to the console gaming industry, and something Microsoft is great at (which is why they were such a good fit).
Nintendo pioneered this in the 80s, with their connector patents and weird, proprietary chips that cartridges required, learning from Atari's "mistakes" of not locking it down hard enough. They were rewarded with big sacks of money and developers that got used to the rough treatment. The industry still hasn't recovered.
It's why I love GamePark so much. Fun little handhelds and open development. I've bought two of their products so far. But they file for bankruptcy more often than Shigeru Miyamoto flashes his trademark smile; it isn't an industry that is easy to break into, and there's not much incentive for the big players to start playing nice.
Exactly. The issue here is not a battle between a belief that consumers have the right to do whatever they want with whatever signal or device they possess and the belief that consumers don't have that right. It's an issue of open vs. closed standards and ecosystems. The video game industry, and by extension consumers, have been demonstrably harmed for years by these sorts of control measures.
Consider the ethics of (a) using the Wiimote to drive my set-top box and (b) getting DirecTV without paying for it. The situations are clearly different. The former drives innovation [1], the latter doesn't.
