Well, it’s not against the law to sell for a loss… it’s against the law to produce for a loss. So it’s okay for Best Buy to sell a blu-ray player for a loss to increase foot traffic but it’s not okay for Ford to sell an F-150 for a loss.
Again, this is conjecture based on what I’ve been told.
Editer
3690
But Jeff, you’re taking food out of my kid’s mouth by going Sony! I thought we USM HC folks stuck together!
No, you can turn it off. (And put something over it if you don’t trust that it’s off. : )
RickH
3691
They made the e-reader a viable, popular platform for reading books. Think about that again. Those fuckers!
Thongsy
3692
Is the Kinect required to always be activated everytime you turn on the XBone? That seems like an annoyance if you don’t have the room for it or any other reason. Honestly the problem with this whole 180 thing is their doing it in steps each time the internet rages over something. No headset, a week later they add a headset. The message is very mixed and unclear right now. We’re gamers on a gaming site and I have seen a number of post where people didn’t know one thing or another. Imagine the non-hardcore gamer who probably just paid attention to e3 and maybe Comic Con so they don’t even know what MS has done or only knows bits and pieces.
Now that you say this i am changing my vote. I wish apple had won the ebook war so i could pay twice the price for ebooks in order to line apple’s pockets. If only they hadn’t got caught price fixing, it would have been so much better for everyone involved!
JeffL
3695
LOL, Denny, you should do improv. ;)
Actually, from what I understand, the DOJ did investigate Amazon for selling ebooks at a loss… And found no evidence of wrongdoing. They sold some ebooks at a loss- especially new releases, which is what pubs were pissed about- but on the whole their eBook department has never operated at a loss- it is self-sufficient, not being propped up by the rest of the company.
jpinard
3697
Piecemeal is fine. It means Microsoft is listening and reconsidering it’s position. The thing they weren’t considering with “kinect only” for communication is the fact there’s just too much going on in most people’s houses and it’d be so easy for a sibling/friend to mess up a person’s game. Like I could see my niece walking by muttering “Xbox off” just to rile up my nephew - his game is then shut down. With a headset/mic he doesn’t have to worry about that.
It is just impossible to think they couldn’t have realized that this would be a problem though.
If even one person with any sort of power in the division had played a single game with voice communication, they would have run in to the infamous “person with a always on mic” or “person with a standalone mic.” Then they would have realized what a poor idea it was.
Armiger
3699
Can’t find the link I thought I read to support this, but supposedly the xbone can differentiate commands coming from someone using the controller, and therefore the focus of the kinect, vs a random xbox-off’ing individual.
Agreed. It’s all a haze but I remember that as well.
I went back to see if I could find that reference, but so far no luck. I did find something I had not seen yet - someone apparently previewed the a hands-on Kinect 2.0 experience, and as a bonus this includes thoughts on how loud the Xbox One will be.
The problem is when a monopolistic position makes WRITING not a viable option for earning a living (drive out the competition, substitute publishers, be able to force contract terms on every author - check it out, there are loads written about it by places like WSJ).
There’s a tendency to see these kind of problems exclusively from the consumer point of view… I tend to side with the people producing the goods (not selling or consuming them). I guess it comes from my Marxist upbringing…
It’s a disruption, but one that was bound to happen. What’s the term for this? Creative destruction? They are killing part of some businesses but allowing others to flourish (such as self publishing).
It’s not self-publishing. Self publishing would be selling the books through your own store (which happens but is hardly “flourishing”). Amazon is the de-facto publisher, choosing the share of profits and the price of the books and by all intents signing contracts with authors that are 100% similar to those the traditional publishing houses used to sign, except there’s no advances anymore, nor any financial risk on Amazon’s part (and therefore no need to nurture and protect the authors so they develop careers). I am wary of anything that will bring creative production to the XIXth century standard of wealthy individuals being the only ones able to afford creating anything (If there are no advances, and if you need 10k hours to be good at writing -obviously a bullshit number but a good frame of reference- and taking into account most professional authors are not profitable until the 3rd or 4th book, only people who are wealthy enough to not have to earn a living can create literature). Publishers used to finance authors during the first 3-4 years of their career, taking loses and trying to make them improve so they would pay back. Had we reached this point because authors had willingly gone to Amazon, it would be different, but most authors would like for the publishing model to remain, and are slowly being pushed to switch over by traditional publishers dissapearing (cause they can’t set the price for their products and the factual monopoly refuses to carry their books if they protest the pricing the monopoly wants to set).
They are in the process of destroying several companies that lived in competition (big publishers) to establish a monopoly. But this is an xBox thread. I’ll shut up now ;P.
Let me know if there’s an Amazon thread or if you create one. Bezos purchase of the Washington Post (great story in the Sunday paper) also intrigues me.
Kotaku looks at what is and what could have been with the Xbox One controller.
Oh man… I’m glad they rejected “smells” but I for one would have liked a speaker in the controller. Silent Hill on the Wii made fantastic use of the speaker on the controller. Those phone calls were beyond creepy because of the speaker.
And another change… Xbox One will officially not require Kinect to function. Does not even have to be connected. So says the gals and guys at IGN.
Believe this is new news. Had never heard that before.
It will be 400 and shipping without a kinect post gamescom, just watch.
