Kinectless Xbox One announcement today.

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The Kinect is the sacrificial lamb rather than admitting m$ came in too high in initial pricing and under spec'd compared to their rival. Cutting the kinect justifies the price drop they desperately need to shift these to keep up in terms of units in homes.

Kinect was always going to fall on the sword, but I agree, it should have been kept and a hit taken.

However it gets me closer to buying one, and that's the effect they are hoping for.
 
As someone who has had an xbox one since it was out, Its is genuinely my view that kinect made the console and had a lot of potential, Potential that now won't be realised.

The voice commands are superb, as it controlling the guide with your hands, It was like living in the future. Now MS have just degraded it to a machine thast follwoing an old model and its risks losing lost a lot of its everyday multimedia charm
 
Eliot said:
As someone who has had an xbox one since it was out, Its is genuinely my view that kinect made the console and had a lot of potential, Potential that now won't be realised.

The voice commands are superb, as it controlling the guide with your hands, It was like living in the future. Now MS have just degraded it to a machine thast follwoing an old model and its risks losing lost a lot of its everyday multimedia charm
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I agree. I know there a lot of people who wasn't interested in Kinect and neither was I but like you I've had one since day one and its become normal to me. With voice commands, Xbox on, Turn off, Record that, Play, pause etc etc.

How would people record their favourite clips now without Kinect? Because that was a big thing to.

Also see people on the Xbox UK Facebook page asking can they send theirs back for a refund.
 
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I feel this is a really bad move, Kinect is pretty sweet if ya own and use it day to day.

Now the entirety of this Gen has very little new about it.
 
This turns their entire console strategy into a lose lose... it just shows an amazing amount of incompetence imo. They lost out on the cheaper launch price point insisting it be bundled and now they lose out on AAA developers being tempted to use the tech at all.

Very bizarre turn of events for Microsoft, they seem pretty out of touch this generation.
 
So to sum up, pre XB1 launch it was Kinect = Bad, MS are idiots, we don't want it, give us a console without it for less cost.

Now MS remove it and they are still idiots, and now the same people who hated on Kinect are telling us how removing it will take away all the innovation it gave (the innovation they hated prior to today.)
 
Mr Men said:
So to sum up, pre XB1 launch it was Kinect = Bad, MS are idiots, we don't want it.

Now MS remove it and they are still idiots, and now the same people who hated on Kinect are telling us how removing it will take away all the innovation it gave (the innovation they hated prior to today.)
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Yes exactly, because ultimately insisting on bundling it was a very stupid move, however once they decided on going with it they should have committed to stand by the tech and invested in amazing games that fully use it.

Either they have decided the kinect just isn't good enough to create an amazing experience on a AAA game or they have just lost their bottle.

Either way they got the worst of both scenarios. They dun goofed.
 
I think this article sums it up quite nicely:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...-why-a-kinect-free-xbox-one-is-terrible-news/

Unfortunately Microsoft clearly needs more sales and consumers wanted a lower price. The main feature that helped the One to stand out, no longer comes with console. They are going to have a lot of unhappy customers, issues with how people are going to record, lack of Kinect adoption by developers etc.

Don't get me wrong I've had both consoles (PS4 + XB1) but the marketing this console has had is just unbelieveable. I sold my original console when I learned that they were doing the titanfall bundle and dropping the price. This was a £70 saving alone in the first few months. Now this is going on as well. I think I am going to stick with my PC and see what happens during E3. I think this year is going to be interesting!
 
Also, I wonder how much of it was down to international releases, all the different languages having to be programmed etc.

Problem I have is Kinect is an amazing piece of Kit, and we may not now get to realise it full potential.

Or could be a hard blow to Sony, as they wont have much room to manoeuvre in price.
 
Eliot said:
The voice commands are superb, as it controlling the guide with your hands, It was like living in the future. Now MS have just degraded it to a machine thast follwoing an old model and its risks losing lost a lot of its everyday multimedia charm
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I think the fact that the majority of praise that people have for Kinect is to do with navigating the menus/apps says it all really; they needed to have some decent compelling Kinect games in order to convince people that it was worth having this thing packaged with the console. They failed to do that, so now they're having to provide the option to not have it because people can't see any merit in having it at all, in a gaming context at least.
 
ps3ud0 said:
You have to wonder what this vision they had was if they felt forced to make such changes within 6 months of launch - guess they have to listen to sales...
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Their vision was presumably to recoup R&D invested into Kinect by forcing people to buy it, they've hardly shown any interest in supporting it beyond voice commands and those can be done using a cheap Microphone.

As for Microsoft actually dropping Kinect, is anyone honestly surprised? it was inevitable the way Microsoft have neglected to use it any meaningful way... the writing was on the wall when they freed up 10% GPU power reserved for it.
 
mmj_uk said:
Their vision was presumably to recoup R&D invested into Kinect by forcing people to buy it, they've hardly shown any interest in supporting it beyond voice commands and those can be done using a cheap Microphone.

As for Microsoft actually dropping Kinect, is anyone honestly surprised? it was inevitable the way Microsoft have neglected to use it any meaningful way... the writing was on the wall when they freed up 10% GPU power reserved for it.
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A cheap Mic cant, sorry, but the Mics in the Kinect are of a pretty high standard.
 
Still needs to be cheaper than the PS4 as it is, as the article says, essentially a souped up 360 with no distinguishing features. MS are in the same boat as Nintendo this gen.
 
Their biggest mistake was not supporting it. Lets look at how the kings of revolutionary gaming tech do it. Nintendo.

The first analogue stick on the N64 controller, designed to be used with none other then freaking Mario64.

The rumble pack, released and bundled with Star Fox 64 and developed with the game fully in mind from the start.

The memory expansion pack for the N64 was released and bundled with DonkeyKong64 and was required for games like Zelda: Majoras Mask and Perfect Dark.

Wii motion controls, designed to be used for Wii sports but also AAA games like Zelda.

WiiU screen essential for the release games and designed with them in mind, games like ZombieU using it.

You have to go all out supporting a new tech by creating a game that everyone wants to play using the tech, Microsoft completely failed to support the kinect either because it wasn't good enough or because they werent willing to pay enough for a developer to create a stand out game using it.
 
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