Maybe I am mistaken, but wasn’t part of the reason for the slow roll out of XBOX One in Europe/elsewhere in part attributed to the lack of proper voice controls with the Kinect?
Here’s the new handy chart:
JD
5111
Kiss of death for Kinect. Good riddance! Seriously, I’m all for this stuff when it works really great, but while v2.0 was certainly better than v1.0, it was simply not good enough. If you add the whole DRM system they had planned, I’d love to know how much money and time was spent on stuff they’ve backtracked on in the past 10 months. With the Xbox One even being outsold by PS4 in the US in the month Titanfall came out, one can only imagine how much worse it must be in the other 12 markets the system is currently available in. The video is kinda funny since they have to explain that the console is still a really awesome system without Kinect while trying to communicate that Kinect totally still has value at the very same time.
That said, it’s the right move. Good on them!
Retailers wasting no time. Best Buy front page has the “Kinectless” One up for pre-order this morning.
So a $400 Kinect-less Xbox One that I don’t need a $5-a-month extra fee to use as a smart streaming media device is coming in June?
Congrats Microsoft, you’ve just managed to move me from the “I see no reason to bother upgrading” camp into the “this looks like something I might buy in the near future” camp. Now give me a couple of “can’t live without” exclusives and you’ve got yourself a sale. (or toss in backwards compatibility with my 360, but I know that supposedly isn’t possible)
Interesting wrinkle on the Games with Gold program, by the way. Games with Gold on the 360 will continue as-is. (You add the game to you account and keep it forever, even if the Gold sub lapses.) On the Xbox One, the GmG program is more like the PS+ version. You have to maintain a Gold sub to play the games you’ve claimed in the promotion.
Free Games Offer: For paid Gold members only. On Xbox One, active Gold membership required to play free games you’ve downloaded. Must download titles during designated window. Kinect and/or hard drive required for some games.
RickH
5115
How expensive would a decent USB microphone be, anyway?
If they can throw in a mic with my surround sound amp for auto-calibration, I figure one for voice commands wouldn’t render the non-Kinect SKU unprofitable.
The console already comes with a pack-in headset doesn’t it? Just use that.
Of course, they won’t do that because then you wouldn’t have a reason to buy the $100 separate Kinect in the Fall.
Free Games Offer: For paid Gold members only. On Xbox One, active Gold membership required to play free games you’ve downloaded. Must download titles during designated window. Kinect and/or hard drive required for some games.
Unless that is a miswording, it is not like PS+. You don’t have to download the titles, you just have to ‘buy’ them while they are free on PS+.
I guess it depends on whether you think the Xbox division is still being managed by a cosmetically different yet functionally identical set of mindless mongoloid fucktard soulless empty suits circa 2013 or if they truly turned a new leaf.
If they released a little $19 USB button microphone with the Kinect’s voice control, that would be a minor point in Xbox’s favor. And the xbone needs all the points it can get.
I’m talking more about the fact that you don’t get to keep the titles even if the Gold sub lapses. The XBONE version is going to be just like PS+ in that regard.
Cyrano
5120
I thought there was more than one mic in the Kinect 2.0 and that it had noise-cancelling processing on board. Could be wrong.
Yeah, I looked it up and you’re right. It actually focuses four separate microphones on the person speaking, and can do that because the cameras know where you are. Assuming that’s not all bullshit, a cheapo USB mic wouldn’t cut it.
ARogan
5122
So home gold caught my eye on the chart. Is this a new feature?
https://support.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/xbox-live/xbox-live-gold-sharing-features
At home with Xbox One
As an Xbox Live Gold member, you can share the benefits of Xbox Live Gold with others while they’re using your Xbox One console in your home. Friends and family can simply create their own account and gamertag on the console, which gives them the ability to enjoy Xbox Live online multiplayer gaming and access to entertainment apps.
Friends or family members with their own gamertags coming over to play? No problem. They can log in and play online multiplayer games, even if you sign off.
So another feature they are now parity with ps4.
That’s been a standard feature of the Xbox One’s version of Gold.
August 2013: http://www.polygon.com/2013/8/9/4605820/xbox-one-home-gold
It just got buried in all the other 180 news at the time.
Good for them! MS has some really great leadership now… and based on the basic “writing on the wall” decisions finally being made shows just how brain-deaf the past leadership was.
Kudos to Microsoft for turning the ship around.
Yusef Mehdi talks about the decision to offer the Kinectless XBONE:
“The decision we’re announcing today is offering a choice to people that would allow people to buy an Xbox One and then ramp up to Kinect when they can afford to,” he said.
Mehdi said the decision was driven in part by the adoption rate of current Xbox 360 owners.
“We have over 80 million people who have yet to buy Xbox One,” Mehdi said.
April NPD must be devastating.
It’s possible that with Microsoft officials saying the Kinect would always be bundled with the Xbox One, some of the current 5 million or so owners might feel like they purchased the system too soon. I asked Mehdi if there were any plans to make that up to those early adopters. The short answer is “No.”
“Our view is that the Xbox One with Kinect is the premium experience,” he said. “The things you are able to do are pretty magical. I think that (early adopters) are hopefully delighted as well with their usage.”
As expected.
Finally, regarding the reserved processing power that is set aside to accommodate Kinect, Mehdi implies that they may be freeing that up:
“We are in discussions with our game publishers about what we might do in this space and we will have more to talk about soon,” he said.
Phil Spencer had more to say about the decision as well.
We know that voice is important to a lot of people and I’d like to unlock that for as many people as we can," Spencer said, as we explored the idea of talking to the console without a Kinect.
…
“Obviously, without Kinect involved, the scenario you bring up is something we’ve thought a lot about with headsets… people own phones today with a microphone … there are other things we could do. It’s part of our discussions about how to use the investment we’ve made in voice to make sure it’s available to as many people as possible.”
Eh, if you have to talk into a headset or cellphone, a lot of the magic is lost. It’s nice for searches, I suppose.
RickH
5128
Yep, under these terms, you can’t “bank” games for when you eventually get the next-gen unit.
