That was my thought, it’s not like there has even been anything compelling that uses it on xbone yet, or even demonstrated as being in development (beyond an expensive navigation peripheral).
Editer
5090
The Kinect version will still be available.
I wouldn’t want to give mine up. KSR is fun, but I LOVE voice control. “Xbox, go to YouTube” or especially “Xbox, Pause” when watching video.
Great that there’s a cheaper SKU now, though. Less expensive is always better.
On the Xbox. I still think it has a future as an input device. Something like Xerox and the mouse.
The interesting question is what will the appetite be for the channel to invest heavily in stock, with reportedly many, many unsold xbone’s sitting gathering dust. My guess is that it will be low - unless MS provide incentive or consignment stock - in which case it will be spun as unprecedented demand for the new sku anyway.
Wow, didn’t expect that to happen this soon. I’m also glad the Xbox Live Gold requirements are changing for things like Netflix.
Teiman
5094
This is like one of these WWF combats, when the evil fighter enters again in the ring (after being launched out by the good guy fighter). Probably theres a technical word for it, I would love to use it here.
<strong japanese accent>FIGHT!</strong japanese accent>
Cyrano
5095
Spencer acted quickly – good for him! I love the Games with Gold for Xbox One stuff. I hope the discounts are good.
KevinC
5096
What I meant is that it would be difficult for developers to justify designing a game around an input device that not everyone will have, especially if the cheaper SKU is more popular (which I expect it will be).
I take they’re not integrating the microphone from the Kinect into the Xbox One proper. Which is a shame, really, as it would be an easy way of keeping the most useful bit of the peripheral without needing the peripheral.
Should have dropped to 349. At 399 they are just weaker PS4.
Kaz CEO twitter on point as usual.
They’re selling the Xbone without kinect, and they aren’t even selling the kinect separately to start. If you buy a $399 Xbone, there is no way for you to add kinect even if you wanted to. That illustrates just how little consumers care about motion control.
On the other hand, it would be pretty cool if the base Xbone could accept a little USB microphone to retain voice commands. Should be built in to the next revision of the hardware, but they could sell a $19 USB mic right now.
I agree that $399 is not an aggressive price point, but at least it’s competitive.
For Xbox One users, this is cause for celebration. Definitely smart moves all around.
For investors and the MS Board, this is a “What took so long?” admission of facing an uphill climb.
Sony provided future students of business a case study with the PS3 launch and how to lose a customer base. Microsoft may have done them one better by seemingly ignoring Sony’s mistakes and re-creating them…which will provide an even more compelling set of case studies down the road.
Good on MS. Welcome news. Were I them, I’d be studying the ways that Sony brought the PS3 back and emulating that.
I think the Kinect does some audio processing onboard, doesn’t it? I would not expect the mic functionality without Kinect in that case, at least until the next HW revision.
MS has an uphill battle ahead of them, much more so than the PS3. You just don’t see very many console exclusives these days. All the studio games you want to play are multiplatform. Exclusives sell consoles.
And all the indie games are only available on PS4!
That $100 price difference was killing them. It’s terrific that Spencer recognized that and acted so quickly.
It’s a shame that their E3 June 9th press conference surprise was ruined. It’s obvious that they were trying to do the “…AND IT’S ON SALE RIGHT NOW!!!” power-move, but everything was leaking all over the place.
That said, I’m not sure if this will be enough. This only gets them price-parity, and in terms of the world market, I think the die is already cast. Outside of the US, people want the PS4. I don’t think they’ll ever catch up to that. Of course, that may not matter if MS can capture enough of the US market…
7 years ago, the question a lot of us considered again and again was whether the Wiimote was a gimmick or a doorway to a wide open pathway towards a new way of thinking about videogames.
With what appears to be a shovelful of dirt on the Kinect coffin here, that question’s been settled completely (if it wasn’t before, obviously).
I think there’s a middle ground between gimmick and “…new way of thinking about videogames”, because it was kind of both. It was a new way of thinking about games, but it wasn’t the only way to think about them going forward, which is what some people caught up in the Wii’s success thought. So yeah, motion controls are not the only way forward, but I’m glad they’re around, and I think as the technology improves, we might get back to a point where something like the Kinect is a natural thing to include in a console, even if it’s only used (well) in a handful of games. We just aren’t there yet, and that hurt MS because they bet big that we were.
There are plenty of examples of good voice recognition devices besides the Xbox One. There should be no hardware reason you couldn’t still do it.
I wonder if MS is gonna do something for the early One adopters who paid the extra for a the camera that will now be surely abandoned by developers. Not that it was being used much anyways.
Doubtful. Why give them anything extra? They paid for and got a Kinect sensor that still remains a “vital” and “important” part of Microsoft’s vision for the console. It’s not like the sensor will no longer work for TV controls.
