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Kinect Free Xbox One official, June 9th (1 Viewer)

Sam Posten

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Related: I'm getting an Xbox for my theater room now. Well, maybe if someone has a price special, so far I've been enjoying it in my laid back flat panel setup....
 

Chuck Anstey

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Microsoft wants us to believe this decision had nothing to do with the failure or lack of developer acceptance of the Kinect. For me to believe that requires I believe Microsoft people are incredibly stupid. Once the device is no longer guaranteed to be on all consoles, no developer is going to waste their resources on incorporating it except in a very few games.

The other interesting (to me) part of the article was the indirect verification that Microsoft is spying on its users. There is no way they could state anything like "80% of the owners use it averaging 120 voice commands a month" without the system reporting on them.
 

Morgan Jolley

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The marquee XBO game up to this point was Titanfall, which did not use Kinect at all and was available on the last-gen MS console as well as PC. It was the number 1 selling game for the month it came out but the XBO was not the number 1 selling hardware.

I think that alone says everything that needs to be said about this situation.

A Kinect-less XBO is nice because it lowers the price, but now it just seems like a gimped PS4. It's bigger, uglier, and runs at worse performance than a PS4, plus they just removed the only unique selling point while playing catch up to Sony's PS+ strategy.

Sony reversed course on a controversial subject very recently and it took them less than 24 hours to respond. MS took almost a full year to remove Kinect. Yeah.
 

mattCR

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The more I think about it, this is a moment where as far as I'm concerned they could just pack up the XBOX1 and give up.

The XBOX one uses roughly the same processor as the PS4, but it's slower. It's a slower clocked processor with significantly slower clocked ram. As a result, XBOX owners have had to deal with 720P/900P versions of cross-platform games while the PS4 gets 1080P.
The XBOX1 versions struggle to hit framerates, the PS4 doesn't.

That was all OK, though, because Microsoft contended that as time went on, the Kinect 2.0 which was:http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-says-xbox-one-will-never-sell-without-kinect/
"Xbox One is Kinect. They are not separate systems. An Xbox One has chips, it has memory, it has Blu-ray, it has Kinect, it has a controller. These are all part of the platform ecosystem," Phil Harrison, a Microsoft corporate vice president, told CVG in response to a question on whether or not the Xbox One will ever be sold without the Kinect.
So, let's really look at this:
Microsoft promotes a digital only format.
Then they bail.
Microsoft promotes a DRM format.
Then they bail.
Microsoft promotes Kinect as a required element.
Then they bail.

It seems to me that that while people mock the WiiU, Nintendo actually fought for their system (which is now over 7 million units, and has one of the top selling title this month in Mario Kart 8), and Microsoft just bailed.
MS put out Titanfall (I own on XB1) which is "OK" but not great (IMHO), but it was the #1 selling game last month.. but the XB1 wasn't, the PS4 was.

Microsoft's problem with the XB1 won't be solved this way.
They now are offering a console with considerably less power than the PS4, a processor with fewer graphic shaders, fewer pathways, much slower memory against a console that is now the exact same price.
In cross-platform titles, the PS4 will almost always be superior. That's just a fact. The XB1 is running many at 720P or 900P, while the PS4 has higher framerates and resolutions.

MS seems to have just admitted 'we screwed up', and I don't know how they recovery from this. They have nothing that differentiates their console from Sony now in any positive way.
 

Chuck Anstey

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No doubt MS should have doubled down on the Kinect and simply dropped the price. They had fixed it so users don't have to have it plugged in and that seems like a really good compromise. Price matching the PS4 then negates buyers' concern over paying for a device that will not be used. Now its 'free' and you can leave it in the box if you want.
 

Morgan Jolley

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mattCR - you've actually misrepresented quite a lot there. The significant hardware difference between the XB1 and PS4 is that the memory is different types. The PS4 architecture is a bit better (they do make hardware, after all; MS makes mostly software) but they are basically 99.9% the same stuff. The sole reason why games look/run better on PS4 is because 10% of processor power was always set aside for Kinect functionality, whether for game- or system-level commands and such.

Now, the Xbox One is basically MS' interpretation of the PS4. It's bigger, a bit boxier, some would say uglier, and has Halo on it (eventually).

Also, Mario Kart 8 is out in over 2 weeks on May 30th, so I don't know why you're saying its a big seller yet.

Titanfall was developed by Respawn and published by EA. It was also out on the 360 but I'm not sure if that counted in the sales numbers for it being number 1 in its first month.

But I agree that they have basically nothing that shows the XB1 to be special. We're back to the point where exclusives matter THAT MUCH because features apparently don't. I should also note that the PS4 Camera is basically sold out and has been for months but nobody wants a Kinect.
 

mattCR

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Actually, no.

The difference isn't just memory type.

The difference is that the PS4 has a GPU with 18 compute units hardware balanced to 14+4 GPGPU configuration. Yes, the memory difference also matters significantly, as it runs GDDR5 ram, which gives it a much higher upper end.

Compare that to the xbox's 12 GPU compute units with a second command processor for GPGPU, giving it 12+3(1) and ddr3 ram with GPU ESRAM to give it a boost.

The PS4's GPU has more ROPs at 32, double that of the XBOX1, which has 16.

The XBOX1 had previously used one of the cores tasked over for Kinect processing/etc. This may be freed with an OS update that allows that overhead to be retasked to other purposes.. but if that's the case you really blow up the purpose of Kinect by killing off promised functionality.

Mario Kart 8 is one of the biggest sellers of the month because of pre-commitment purchases. That's measured by Amazon and others which keeps it pegged at #2 at their site.

Titanfall numbers for the 360 and 1 are organized differently, but it sold very well on the XBOX1. That's true. Still, the hitch is that it was supposed to be a real console seller for Microsoft and it wasn't. The PS4 sold more consoles that month then did XBOX.

Now I'll say the thing that MS doesn't want to hear.. the reason why the PS4 camera has sold out and sells like crazy is because of 1 app: Playroom. When combined with the easy social integration, Playroom streams on UStream and Twitch nightly with people hosting their own talkback shows night after night of random quality. But there is nothing like it on XBOX.. not even close.

I have both, like both.. but the thing that allowed the XBOX to counter some of the PS4 arguments of superior base hardware was a unique platform that provided direct integration of a unique experience through Kinect. That's gone now.

Exclusives will help, yes, but Microsoft has to have some sensational exclusives because their cross platform titles will now be compared by the fact they are less then the PS4 version. That's just a fact. The WiiU, at least can say: our version offers a DIFFERENT experience. The Kinect had a chance to say.. when a game comes to our platform we'll integrate some unique Kinect oriented functions.. but the likelihood of that decreased significantly now. Wait, watch as XBOX without Kinect quickly outsells those with. And since people aren't required to have the camera connected, many will lose it.

The HDMI pass through is the next thing that will go, because without the Kinect establishing the IR blaster, the HDMI passthrough is worthless
 

Edwin-S

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MicroSoft sure fell on their faces with the XBone. Their convergence strategy was an even bigger disaster than Sony's for the PS3. At least the PS3 eventually got a lot of useful upgrades. Most of the Xbone "features" turned out to be useless.
 

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