Xbox One No Longer Requires Kinect to Function

[-Dragmire-]

In addition to reversing its used game DRM policies for Xbox One, Microsoft has revealed that the console will no longer require Kinect to function. In our latest Ask Microsoft Anything, Xbox Corporate Vice President Marc Whitten revealed that Xbox One owners will be able to use all of the console's core functions regardless of whether the new Kinect sensor is connected. Naturally, many of the tentpole features of the new Kinect, such as player identification, voice commands, etc., will be disabled as a result, but players will still be able to play games and access entertainment content.

Its kinda funny watching Microsoft reverse all their Xbone policies. I'm willing to bet that now there will be a kinect free version to bring the console down to $400!

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/12/xbox-one-no-longer-requires-kinect-to-function

That will probably be far after launch. I doubt they want to see mass cancellations due to a kinect free cheaper version.

EDIT: Also, they'll want the initial install base of the kinect as high as possible.

 

[Frezzato]

God damn, four months from street date and Microsoft is still mucking about with major system changes. My view of Microsoft has now shifted from distrust to pity.

 

[Baldr]

Now literally the only swaying point for me to get the Xbone is gone, mandatory Kinect functionality meant that game developers could potentially be free to design games using the Kinect, safe in the knowledge that they would be reaching out to a massive audience. Ah well. Guess I'll stick just to PC gaming then.

All Xbox will have a Kinect, it not like they are dropping them from the system. So it still safe in that regard. The day they drop the Kinect from the system will be the day I quit the game industry.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

So... what? Microsoft are the good guys now? They started the show off waving that area between the balls and the anus in our faces. That was met poorly and they tried to reason with us to see why they were showing their lude bits to us and tell us that it was purely for our benefit. We called bull and soon they proceeded to apologise and slowly put their pants back on (excruciatingly slowly... hoping the obscenity would grow on us). Then finally offered nothing to distinguish itself from its competitors other then a total lack of self-awareness.

One of my biggest complaints about the PS4 was that it really didn't do anything. Aside from the improved hardware and developer friendly architecture the PS4 is just the PS3 again but aping facebooks "social networking". They literally did nothing and won the hearts of many. It was utterly safe, which is okay (better then innovation without motivation) but they hardly justified a whole new generation that actively segregates the prior generations.

What is Xbone doing? Exactly the same thing now, but with the odorous smell of gooch spoiling everyones good times.

This isn't a crack at their lack of integrity... I wanted them to change. But for fuck sake, we're nearly half a year after they shat the bed (the reveal) and they are still, begrudgingly (and have on numerous occasions tried to guilt US over it), cleaning the bed sheets.

How can anyone be so quick to run back to them. Like battered spouses.

Captch: Charlie Bit Me

Well maybe you shouldn't have put your finer in his mouth... wow, that analogy might have been better for the preceding comment.

 

[Reeve]

It looks like I'll be buying the Xbox 180 from ebay and getting my games pre-owned then.

 

[clippen05]

And yet it still has to be plugged in right? Meaning I will most likely never buy it. Its a waste of money to buy something I will never, ever use. Make a Kinect-free version, then maybe I'll consider it.

 

[Zeldias]

Microsoft has done a two 180s now before the new Xbox has released.

One might say they've done a...

(?_?)
( ?_?)>⌐■-■
(⌐■_&#9632

360.

 

[masticina]

I don't belief this

Look they have been fighting to keep Kinect 2.0 as required. They have ditched the Online Always, they have ditched the "your discs really only carry the bits but the license is locked to your console"

But to ditch Kinect 2.0... what force is causing them to do this?

Low Sales? .. sales aren't that bad right.

Countries that have upcoming lawsuits against spying? Well that could possible be it...

Kinect 2.0 is their child! I don't belief them just ditching the idea.

 

[Savryc]

Well done Microsoft, but going from a minus score to zero doesn't mean I'm gonna buy it.

 

[SeventhSigil]

Spoiler: snip

This almost got interesting. Inferior hardware for the same price would make for a much closer race than inferior hardware for more money. Maybe Microsoft is just biding their time with all of these Xbone about-faces. Perhaps each was planned as a fallback point from the beginning...

Or maybe they've planned to make a package that drops the Kinect and $150 off the price, that might actually make it competitive.

As someone who is essentially sitting this generation out, I'm interested to see if one side screwing up and slowly correcting themselves garners more praise than the other side having a reasonable(ish) plan from the beginning and sticking to it.

To be honest, and I'm speaking as someone who is pretty pleased with the change, if only for peace of mind, the string of policy changes seem less some preplanned series of fallback points, And more a gradual toeing of the line. Rather than simply make all of the changes at once, they're seeing how many changes it would actually take to get sales up to whatever projections they have or, possibly, to reach a parity with the PS4. When the DRM and used game reversal were made, There was a responding surge in preorders, but the Xbox One looked to be behind the PS4. So they loosened indie restrictions by allowing self-publishing, which, at least on Amazon, made absolutely no difference. When that wasn't enough, they included a headset, same lack of difference. When that wasn't enough, they made the Kinect no longer quite as critical to the system's operation.

I base this mostly off the fact that the loosening of indie policies, and the inclusion of a headset both have likely cost Microsoft a fair bit of income and control. With self-publishing, presumably they cannot seek terms of timed exclusivity on indie games like they could with the Xbox 360's indie publishing policies, Meaning that any indie exclusives are likely ones they would have to fund outright, or purchase, instead of making it a requirement to publish through Microsoft Studios. Combine that with the fact that they previously released statements insisting they would not be changing their minds on either policy, and the suggestion is that something has motivated them to do it after all.

What really leaves me curious is what might happen if this newest announcement doesn't tip the numbers in their favor either. Will they give up and just let things rest as they are? Or are more changes on the horizon?

Perhaps this is just me being incredibly cynical about advertising and corporate PR in general... and Microsoft's PR specifically... but I tend to assume such statements of intent are simply lies (in fact, I'll be amazed if Sony's PS4 used game policy is as simple in practice as it is in their advertising). There's very little to be gained by honesty in advertising these days, and very little to be lost through a lack thereof.

Mind you, I do agree that they absolutely intended to get away with all of their schemes to begin with... if possible. Turns out that a large portion of their customer base is smart enough not to fall for that (insert meme about faith in humanity featuring Freddy Mercury here).

The thing is, something I've noticed about businesses is that they have two faces. The general corporate face, when their consumer base is sufficiently large and they're working on maximizing profits off it. And then the wounded face, the demeanor they put on whenever they are trying to expand their numbers. The second one is noticeable because a company will generally be at its most honest, and its most dependable during this phase, not because of some form of altruism necessarily, but because they're still trying to build up their numbers. The promises that they can keep, they keep. The extra services and bonus content that they can offer, they will, all because they know they can make more money if they have more people, and can get more people if they're not such douche nozzles.

Don't get me wrong, there are certainly features that have been promised or suggested in the current generation that never surfaced, for better or worse. My suspicion generally just extends to things that aren't supposed to be available at launch, and especially those with no timetable for implementation, Because if we are talking about things that are expected by launch, we will generally still catch a company wearing its second face. (What is noticeable is that, looking at Microsoft's original policies, I'm somewhat under the impression that a good chunk of their problem came from the fact that they were inappropriately working under their first face. Basically, they were trying to maximize profits from their consumer base from Day One, even though they hadn't even built up any consumer base for the console yet, thus all the horrible backfiring Because the measures meant to maximize profit off each person were actually just driving said people away.)

As for Sony's used game policy, the general consensus seems to be that it's pretty much going to remain the way it was this current generation. So publishers will indeed have the option to charge for online passes, and other measures, but the idea seems to be that there won't be any brand-new-fangled restrictions, Like making it so off-line game simply won't function at all. Now, as you said, a company can fail to deliver on promises be it inadvertently or deliberately, but in this case they're basically saying they'll deliver on something they've already been doing for the past seven years or so. Meaning that failure to do so, say by adding some never-before-used method of used game restriction, is going to be more difficult for them to get away with than simply not bringing a feature they mentioned to light, because this wouldn't so much be neglect as it would be deliberately acting contrary. An example would be the fact that they said that multiplayer would be free for the PlayStation 3, and it's something they stuck to even though the success of Live Gold probably made them regret it more than a little.

While I agree, large businesses are dedicated entirely to profit above all else, generally speaking there are lines that they will toe, At least until they believe they can get away with more. Sony in particular does actually have a fair bit to gain by following through on their promises, as they built up a considerable bit of momentum over the competition in the prelaunch period, And making a complete liar out of themselves so early in the game would probably screw all that up.

I don't belief this

Look they have been fighting to keep Kinect 2.0 as required. They have ditched the Online Always, they have ditched the "your discs really only carry the bits but the license is locked to your console"

But to ditch Kinect 2.0... what force is causing them to do this?

Low Sales? .. sales aren't that bad right.

Countries that have upcoming lawsuits against spying? Well that could possible be it...

Kinect 2.0 is their child! I don't belief them just ditching the idea.

When it comes to sales, I had been thinking about that, and something occurred to me. We're not really sure what Microsoft had planned for this generation in terms of audience size. Some statements a few months ago suggested that they were expecting the entertainment features to increase the selling power of their system considerably, and to be honest they probably weren't expecting to actually make such a mess of their PR. So depending on how many consoles they are hoping to sell, and most importantly how much money they have invested into the system in the first place, this could be a matter of High Expectations; Dead Space 3 sold many copies, But since EA had set the sales bar so high, they still judged it to be a relative flop, canning any immediate plans for a fourth installment. What we might be seeing is a console that is selling well enough in preorders, even selling better than the previous generation did, but maybe still isn't reaching their targets.

That being said, it could be a comparative issue rather than an outright one. Essentially, even if they don't mind their sales numbers, they might not enjoy whatever disparity is between their figures and the competition's.

 

[Genocidicles]

Well it's just a matter of time until they announce a version without the Kinect. Just because they say they won't doesn't mean they actually won't.

I mean, remember the DRM which was supposedly absolutely vital for the system?

Of course I could always buy a second hand xbone, without that gimmicky piece of shit bundled with it. Either is fine.

 

[Gearhead mk2]

I'm gonna find an image macro that says "too little too late", and every time Microsoft tries to do something good, I'm gonna post it and add just enough text below it that I don't get flagged for low content.

 

[Insideout Ink Demon]

my gods MS, so full of it. wasnt the DRM and the Kinect an integrated feature that couldnt just be "switched off"?

 

[Lunar Templar]

yay?

still not getting one, was never going to get one, not getting a PS4 ether. the console market on the whole has really just become not worth it to me.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Not to derail the topic, but why does this thread appear to have 143 pages?

edit: nevermind. it's gone back to 4.

 

[Roxas1359]

Not to derail the topic, but why does this thread appear to have 143 pages?

edit: nevermind. it's gone back to 4.

There's a saying we have on the Escapist, and it still applies to situations like this.
Whenever there is an image problem, featured video not playing, or tech problem in general, you just blame one person on this site:

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I do not trust them. They could, at any moment after release, announce," Hey, you know all that crap we back-pedaled on? Yeah, we're gonna send out an update that re-establishes all that because we have you're money." They could do it with Kinect, and I see them doing it with the used-games policy. Are there things that could happen to the camera? Yes. But remember, this is Microsoft. They have been know to pull underhanded tactics.

For the record, I don't trust PS4 either.

This is what has me on the ropes, myself. I've sang the sad song about the Microsoft Zune that made them rip out all the great functions when they were done with it. And if it was this easy to flip a switch to turn it off for the X1, then it's that easy to flip it and turn it back on.

I am more interested now, though. Stupid Killer Instinct, playing on my love for massive, stupid combos and 90's Nostalgia...