I can understand both sites of this discussion. For one, Kinect 1 presented some major ideas before hand (Im thinking about the admwith that kid playing larate and his sister dressing up) but in the end nothing really exciting came to end users. On the other hand, forcing everyone to have a Kinect ensures developers that everyone has the added functionality. Till now they had to think about which functions they realise, so people without a Kinect (quite a few) can enjoy the game the same way (or do a kinect only game and reach less people). So, if they now implement voice functions and other kinds of interacitivity it kinda gets integrated, because it'll be a big hassle without it (thats what a guy on page 1 described as his idea of integration).
So I for my part support the decision so we can all hope for a better integration and better games as with kinect 1. Im a little cautious though, because the biggest problem with Kinect 1 (jumping hands) was the first thing I saw at the demonstration of Kinect 2 (or One, whatever). When they started to use it there hands were instantly flickering all over again. I can see that as a big downside for the 'touchcontrol' kind of interactivity.
And while you are discussing about Skype, let me throw that in, too. I don't really like what Ms did there. MSN and Skype in my oppinion arent that integrated as they told us it would be. Both, the windows phone and the windows 8 app, have the problem that the messages appear twice on each device, on my desktop 3 times.. So you either kill the integrated messages and have to open an app to chat, you disable Notifications in the Skype App (and still get numbers on tiles and on the desktop also no call notification) or you kill the skype app completely. But thas a whole different sorry, sorry for bringing that up