The one _very_ successful aspect of the Kinect was it's speech recognition capabilities. People saying: "Xbox Play Netflix" - that very much preceded the current boom in what you accurately describe as the hockey puck speakers.

Another much under-appreciated aspect of Kinect was what an absolutely phenomenal video conferencing system it was - using Skype on Xbox was on par with expensive custom systems. Great speakerphone (that audio recognition) and it would resize the focus on the fly to include all the faces in the room (panning around).