The Xbox kinect already does this AND records video, millions of gamers own one as well.

At least the backlash and market demand made the Kinect optional.

Yea but I think that was more because of the added cost and not the privacy implications.

But the primary function of the Xbox is not to record data and send it back to its servers - the main selling point of the Echo is basically smart voice data analysis. Offline, an Xbox is still useful - the Echo becomes useless.

Being far from an industry expert, it seems to me that Amazon just at least wants to try to get some smart device of their own into your proximity.

All the big stacks want to.

Google has nest and android phones.

Microsoft has XBox (also voice activated and motion-recording) and band (with GPS) and windows phone.

Apple has iDevices.