Microsoft Finally Selling Xbox One Without Kinect 227
DroidJason1 writes: "Microsoft has unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One. The unbundled system's price now matches the PlayStation 4. Microsoft is touting 'your feedback' as the reason for this move. Any Xbox One functionality that relies on voice, video, gestures, etc, will not work without a Kinect, and users will be able to purchase a standalone Kinect later this year."
Re:Microsoft misses the point. (Score:5, Informative)
The very same announcement also announced that a Gold membership will no longer be required for streaming services.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Informative)
With the Xbox One, MS has been backpedaling faster than Lance Armstrong approaching a drug-test checkpoint. Suddenly all those bad ideas that were so "essential" are turning into what they were all along: just fucking bad ideas.
Re:Correction / FTFY (Score:5, Informative)
s/Your feedback/A massive lack of sales
In Capitalist USA, where dollars = votes, this is the best form of feedback.
Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you should learn how to use Google?
Because at various times, Microsoft has announced those were (or would be) requirements.
And I can't blame you for being a tool who hasn't really been following this saga. But, nonetheless, I will.
Because you're clearly ill-informed about all of the things Microsoft has said, and then retracted about this console. And, I can assure you, BOTH of those things had been announced and then changed by them.
Oh I dunno (Score:4, Informative)
We tried to peddle something, nobody wanted.
We reversed our unpopular stance by back-pedalling, and now we're back peddling.
Just whilst I'm on the topic, I'm most narked (and I accept alone), in actually *liking* the original "always-on-in-the-cloud" original XBone pitch.
The kinect can just wither and die though - voice was great. Camera...oh I'm sure it looked great in the pitch.
Media stuff looked pretty damn good when I was convinced they were going to sell it as a cable/ADSL streaming trojan Tivo+ box. I've now no idea wtf they were thinking.
Sell an XBone+ with 1080 games and you can refurb the millions you've sold as leased cable boxes.
Re:Live Gold changes too (Score:2, Informative)
No other devices like Blu-ray players, Roku, AppleTV, etc charges a monthly fee to use apps
No other devise offer actual value beyond access to app contents.
Live Gold subscriptions which is $60/year
Yearly subscriptions go on sale regularly for around $35 on Amazon and other sites. Even with Netflix and Hulu going free, I'm still going to keep mine due to the monthly free games (which you get to keep playing if your subscription expires, unlike with PSN). Just do the math:
Monthly Xbox Gold Cost: $2.92
June Free Game 1: Halo Spartan Assault: $9.99
June Free Game 2: Max - The Curse of Brotherhood: $14.99
June Free Game 3: Dark Souls: $19.99
June Free Game 4: Charlie Murder: $9.99
June Free Game 5: Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition: $29.99
June Xbox Gold Value = $84.95 - $2.92 = $82.03
Even if you want just *one* of the free games, the value for gold is still more than you're paying.
Re:Too little, too late (Score:5, Informative)
You should learn how to read. There was never a "no selling of used games policy"
People in glass houses shouldn't call the kettle black. When Microsoft first spelled out how the One would work [ign.com], they made it pretty clear (well, as clear as Microsoft legalese can be) that gamers couldn't sell their games to just anyone. Rather, gamers would only be able to sell their games to participating retailers, and even then, only if the game's publisher had opted-in to allowing resales for copies of that game (and then the publisher could optionally tack a fee onto the transaction too, thus decreasing how much money you get to take home).
Similarly, you couldn't sell it to friends or online folks. The only option would be to give it away to them, and, once again, you could only do so if the publisher had opted-in to allowing game trades between individuals. Oh, and an additional restriction was that each game could only ever be given away one time, and even then, only to people who had been on your friends list for at least 30 days. They also outright prohibited renting of games or loaning of physical copies of games to friends.
Given all of those ridiculous terms and conditions [time.com], I can see how you might have been confused and failed to realize that the One had those policies in place when it was first announced. Even so, since you read the actual articles, I'd have hoped for better.
As for the always-on requirement, sure, you can play the pedant by pointing out it only needed to phone home once a day rather than constantly, but that's pointless, since it does nothing to address why the requirement was such a source of contention. The reason it was annoying was because it immediately eliminated a number of valid and legitimate use cases in which gamers wouldn't have a regular connection to the Internet. In the armed forces? Too bad. Internet down for a few days? Too bad. Just moved? Too bad. Traveling? Too bad. Out at sea? Too bad. Vacationing in your summer cabin? Too bad. Don't want to connect devices that have no practical need to be online? Too bad. Don't think a company has any business tracking what you're doing with offline, disc-based, single-player games? Too bad.
And the OP was being kind, since he skipped over all of the indie developer controversies that were around early on after the One's announcement, such as requiring that they work with a major publisher [eurogamer.net]. I also noticed that you didn't address his issues with the always-on camera and that they've since flip-flopped on that requirement as well.
The fact that Microsoft managed to make Sony look good, despite the fact that Sony was in the doghouse with virtually every gamer after all of the PSN stuff a few years back, just goes to show you how badly they messed up with the One's launch.
Disclaimer: I own all three consoles of the last gen, and none of the current gen consoles.
Re:LOL (Score:2, Informative)
2x AMD "Jaguar" APU quad core module @ 1.75GHz w/Radeon GCN (768 cores)
8GB DDR3 @ 2133MHz (68 GB/s)
32MB eSRAM (109GB/s)
PS4
2x AMD "Jaguar" APU quad core module @ 1.6GHz w/Radeon GCN (1152 cores)
8GB GDDR5 @ 5500MHz (176 GB/s)
ARM secondary CPU for handling background tasks, downloads, video encoding/streaming
265MB secondary DDR3 for background tasks, OS (68 GB/s)
Let it be known that the Xbone's original CPU speed was the same as the PS4, but when they learned of PS4's vastly superior GPU, they bumped it up by 10% in a pathetic attempt to try to bridge the gap. All games are GPU bound, so it was futile.