The Reddit threads for this development are cringeworthy. Lots of pissed-off early adopters that can’t understand why MS had to make Kinect optional.
My name is severianb. I supported the online DRM and Kinect 2.0 all over the internet, in the face of scorn and downvotes from people who would never even think of buying a XB1.
I looked forward the the bright future of a next-gen machine with the incredible Kinect 2.0 included in every box.
I was absolutely, 100 percent sure that Microsoft was telling the truth when they said it would never be removed, and the fanboy trolls were idiots to say the Kinect would be gone within a year.
Today, I feel like giant, absolute, total ASSHAT.
Thank you for listening.
Edit: Oh, and fuck you, Phil Spencer.
So good.
They still have a right to be pissed. People talk about the mic on the thing but there is also this fancy camera that is by far the biggest cost of the thing. Now it looks like $100 paperweight to many early adopters. In the long run its the right choice to make but not without some more pain as it gets piled on with all the other 180’s MS has done over the last year while Sony just trucks along selling PS4’s following the initial path they laid out from the start.
Vesper
5131
Should we be expecting a $50 pricedrop on PS4 on June 9th as well?
Harmonix’s initial reaction on Twitter is ambiguous.
Oh, great. Super great.
Oh, good.
Too bad you can’t get tone of voice in Twitter.
Here is the official Harmonix response to the MS announcement:
"As avid gamers, we’re excited for fans to have more choices out there. As game makers, this platform change doesn’t affect our strategy – it reinforces that we must continue to focus on building innovative, compelling and well-designed motion experiences to motivate consumers to buy our games.
“We believe that tightly-crafted motion games can be great, genre-defining interactive experiences, as we’ve proven with the Dance Central franchise on Kinect for Xbox 360, and we’re eager to prove it again with Disney Fantasia: Music Evolved this fall on both Xbox One and Xbox 360.”
Another Harmonix reaction.
flyinj
5134
I’m most excited about the fact that Rare will start making real games again.
How long have they been stuck with making these terrible Kinect games? 6 years?
Yeah I guess if you have Kinect games currently in development you can’t feel great about the prospects. Although if you thought your prospects were great to begin with…
Plus you can download and delete them as much as you want. The way the microsoft stuff is worded you have to download it during its free period and that is it. Wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but you can’t upgrade the Xbox One’s hard drive.
If you wanted Forza or Titanfall, the $399 kinectless One is actually a worse deal than the $449 bundle they were selling last month.
If their sales number were that bad in April, how does this help them at all?
I hope there’s something left of the studio. They were hit (Viva Pinata, Banjo Nuts & Bolts) or miss (Kameo, Perfect Dark) on the 360, and I think they lost a few more people when they got reorganized into MS’s Kinect stuff.
Perception is a funny thing. People see $399 and that’s immediately more attractive than $449 with a pack-in game and Kinect because a) many people don’t care about Kinect, and b) they may not care about the game offered.
It’s just like when the 360 Arcade was being sold. The deal actually sucked if you were going to eventually get a hard drive (which most people did) but that reduced price was a lot more attractive to people than the regular SKU for that first year.
People who wanted a $400 console without Kinect and Titanfall or Forza could already buy one, it is called a PS4.
Well, yeah. Note the current sales of the Xbox One…
MS had (and probably still has) a huge backlog of unsold Xbones, obviously because it hasn’t been selling well. They wanted to get rid of that inventory before introducing the $399 SKU. They used the Titanfall bundle to do it.
Well, to be fair, the only reaction so far is by Harmonix, the only company that managed to capitalize on the Kinect in any way for the 360.
Why?
Ps4 is selling like… something that sells a shit ton more than what passes for competition.
With this change, the xbone is finally equal to the ps4, except for the little fact that the ps4 is still more powerful and this power has had a real effect in multi platform games.
My immediate reaction was that i had two immediate reactions:
- I’m not sure what surprises me more. That Microsoft admitted they were wrong about the kinect or that it took them this long. Absolutely nobody thought this was a good idea.
- What next? Xbone is still a straight downgrade from the ps4 to nearly anyone’s eyes. Microsoft has no rolled back the few unique features that were supposed to compete against the ps4’s edge in raw power. What will they do to attempt to counter that edge?
Microsoft needs something to catch up the rest of the way with ps4. Something like: strong exclusives, free xbox gold or another price drop.
All sony needs to do is maintain the status quo and xbone is DOA.
Uh. When a studio’s been doing something for a while…kinda hard to change course.
I also know people waiting for the Scientific Kinect 2.0 for their robotics and similar. They’d pay $150, happily.
Too late for me, after switching from PS2 to 360 I’m firmly in the PS4 camp this generation, but mainly for the stuff I can’t get on PC. I can’t imagine what it would take for me to get a One. Maybe a R* exclusive (not timed) or I dunno, Ultima X only on it. =)
Citizen, there are only 8 Ultima games. To what are you referring?
…
Anyway, yes, it’ll be interesting to see if this shifts the momentum. In the UK, stock informer says… both are available in reasonable numbers. Huh.
