i wonder if MS will give Smartglass a renewed push now that they're abandoning the Kinect. can you control the OneGuide using Smartglass? seems like that would be an obvious feature to include.
Theres also the fact that diminishing returns kind of ignores background things. Like yes textures might not be a huge leap, but characters on screen, animations, loading times, all these things which help make the experience just as important as not seeing jaggies, are drastically improved from last gen, and will only keep improving as developers get better at programming, the way they did with the last gen. If you put Ryse next to a similar game on last gen, there is a "leap". Whether its diminished or not as drastic as xbox original to 360, is pure subjective feeling and opinion.
As for the Kinect thing, it makes sense. Theyre not abandoning it, it just didnt make sense to keep pushing it as a core gaming peripheral when no games would or could make use of it, and those that did didnt sell. I love the Kinect for its UI and voice stuff (xbox record that), but I will not argue that its anything but a gimmick. Like I love gimmicks, and some tech people do too, but if its not pushing units then theres no sense in making it mandatory. Support and R&D might not be as strong, but its not like itll be left broken, its still a perfectly functioning bit of tech if you want it, it just wasnt selling games, and honestly looked like it never would.
As for lack of differentiation, itll come down to exclusives, or controller/UI preferences. A very small market will actually care that its slightly weaker in tech, as was the case last gen. PS4 sold better because it launched in more places, cheaper, and with a stronger and simpler message of familiarity, not because of slightly more ps in their 1080ps
Prohass on
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
oh well. i must say, i am absolutely shocked. i really didn't think they'd do it, but it looks like i was wrong. so i guess this is pretty much the death knell for the kinect then. no developer is going to focus on it without the guarantee that everyone has one, and MS will never be able to include it as standard with future versions of the Xbox since everyone will just wait the Kinect-less version.
hopefully this will get them the sales boost that they're so obviously chasing and they do something to reward/compensate the early adopters, some of which will no doubt be feeling pretty cheated right about now.
I don't mean to go all "I told you so", but I have been saying this for a long time and when Kinect Sports Rivals completely flopped there was clearly no future for the kinect. I mean it's had what, an incredibly shitty fighting game that's probably one of the worst games on either platform (Fighter Within) and Kinect Sports Rivals was basically crapware and sunk like a lead coated rock? What was the value in losing so much ground to Sony in maintaining a $100 price difference for a piece of hardware that wasn't functioning as an actually relevant, useful part of the gaming machine? The casual market that ate Kinect up and bought the crapware to support it has gone, just like how Nintendo found the waggle loving market disappeared to cellphones and the WiiU is tanking.
This is seriously the absolute best thing that Microsoft could have done for the future of the Xbox One and now it will be really interesting to see if they can claw back the early ground advantage they gave to Sony, especially now the proverbial albatross is no longer around their neck.
Edit: And frankly, the Kinect was marginalized right from the start with the Xbone. When your launch title for the Kinect is Fighter Within (and seriously, it's easily one of the worst games I've ever played) and you just throw it out there without even mentioning it, you could see the writing was on the wall. Once Microsoft were forced into a game of playing "Let's puff up our numbers by giving sold to retailers instead of sold to consumers" you knew they were in deep shit. This is precisely the response I predicted several pages ago in the thread and sorry, it was totally predictable to do this.
I definitely agree, the kinect and wii waggle boom is dead, and without being core to games or gaming, the (in my opinion) excellent voice and UI functions are great, but not worth the 100$ wall, and they wont suffer from a lack of R&D or support, they're already fine and will continue to be. There wont be improvements that help in gaming and motion control terms, but those were fundamentally not pushing consoles or games. That market has moved on to tablet and phone gaming. The Kinect as it is (and as it always will be as a consequence of the dried up market), is now something that interests tech heads, who like technology gimmicks. And thats fine, but since they are a niche they can afford the extra 100$, whereas the majority audience simply isnt interested, and therefore wont pay it.
This is separate from "Ill buy it when they drop the kinect" people, who may or may not have been goalpost movers, this is a broader market of people who will buy either whats popular or whats cheapest.
With equal price points, it comes down to more nebulous preferences like exclusives, controllers, familiarity, etc.
Also the fact that there is a more expensive version out there which comes with the kinect, might help a lot of casual buyers see the 400$ kinectless version as a "steal".
I know its all armchair psychology but thats my feelings about it anyway
Also anyone saying the Xbox One will fail or something like that is living in a cookoo clock. It could have half the sales it has right now and it would still be a success, especially since the fight for the attention of gamers has intensified with tablet and mobile games, and cheaper PCs compared to the beginning of last gen.
I haven't seen anyone mention it, but the IR blaster that the TV app uses is in the Kinect so anyone getting a console without one will need to buy whatever IR thing goes into that port on the back of the console if they want the TV stuff to work.
Considering this is a new bundle, I would be surprised if there isn't an IR blaster for that port included in the box.
I haven't seen anyone mention it, but the IR blaster that the TV app uses is in the Kinect so anyone getting a console without one will need to buy whatever IR thing goes into that port on the back of the console if they want the TV stuff to work.
Considering this is a new bundle, I would be surprised if there isn't an IR blaster for that port included in the box.
I'd be surprised if they did that instead of saying "buy a kinect." But really, all bets are off at this point.
“I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
I wrote a thing about this on the site in my sig, but yeah, much disappointment from me about this decision. It means we're never going to get big-budget attempts to use Kinect in creative ways, and then the people who wanted this will use that as evidence for it being the right thing to do.
Again, please don't take my following comment as being antagonistic towards your disappointment, but last year in June/July 2013 I pretty much told you that Kinect was never going to get this ever. Kinect has had years on the 360 to do something interesting beyond showing that it's the most superior device you can think of for making a dancing game. There were attempts to do things with the Kinect last generation that were novel or interesting, but they turned out to be complete failures. Rise of Nightmares tried to be a novel horror experience using the Kinect, Steel Battalion attempted to make a split kinect/controller based games (and is by far, one of the worst efforts the Kinect ever saw) and when it did work, it worked for a particular genre really well in Dance Central.
This sort of statement was not correct a year ago and still isn't now. The Kinect got the experiments it needed to see if it could make genuinely compelling games using it: They failed*. The Xbone Kinect demonstrated right off the bat it still couldn't do anything novel, interesting or worthwhile to justify that $100 difference. Just look at Fighter Within and Kinect Sports Rivals (where like the previous kinect, half the games practically don't work when you might expect them to do so).
And as wonderful as Dance Central and Fantasia are, they appealed to the casual market and Microsoft - quite smartly - has figured out what people all over the internet have been saying since the WiiU tanked. That market is gone. There is no point investing in the future of Kinect in Dancing/Music games to appeal to a casual market that buys these things, which is no longer interested in buying them because they are tapping at Candy Crush on their phone.
Being blunt: Microsoft gambled on the Kinect on the xbone hoping that the casual market that bought it was still there. They gambled and lost, much like another company beginning with an N....
Edit: And I'm pretty happy about this. I convinced my wife to hold off on getting an Xbone because I thought there would either be a price drop or a booting of the kinect at E3. So this pretty much saves us a fair chunk of money on the system and with entertainment apps also being made free, saves us a huge chunk of money on needing a subscription (and makes the Xbone a lot more useful to us as well).
*Or alternatively, narrowly succeeded within a specific sub-genre.
Now I just need to see some exclusives I care about
Right now they're sitting at "none" but hopefully that will change come E3
Sunset Overdrive not moving the needle for you? Typical UnbreakableVow ;-)
I'm hoping for some new reveals at E3 as well.
Nah
It's an absolutely gorgeous game, maybe the best-looking game I've seen to date
But nothing I've seen about the gameplay seems like it will interest me, and I don't trust Insomniac to make good games anymore. The last game of theirs I really enjoyed was R&C: Tools of Destruction way back in 2007
Im one of the unwashed masses who always goes xbox because of Halo and Gears of War. I'd love to play the last of us though so somewhere down the line I might get a ps4 for the HD remake.
oh well. i must say, i am absolutely shocked. i really didn't think they'd do it, but it looks like i was wrong. so i guess this is pretty much the death knell for the kinect then. no developer is going to focus on it without the guarantee that everyone has one, and MS will never be able to include it as standard with future versions of the Xbox since everyone will just wait the Kinect-less version.
hopefully this will get them the sales boost that they're so obviously chasing and they do something to reward/compensate the early adopters, some of which will no doubt be feeling pretty cheated right about now.
I don't mean to go all "I told you so", but I have been saying this for a long time and when Kinect Sports Rivals completely flopped there was clearly no future for the kinect. I mean it's had what, an incredibly shitty fighting game that's probably one of the worst games on either platform (Fighter Within) and Kinect Sports Rivals was basically crapware and sunk like a lead coated rock? What was the value in losing so much ground to Sony in maintaining a $100 price difference for a piece of hardware that wasn't functioning as an actually relevant, useful part of the gaming machine? The casual market that ate Kinect up and bought the crapware to support it has gone, just like how Nintendo found the waggle loving market disappeared to cellphones and the WiiU is tanking.
This is seriously the absolute best thing that Microsoft could have done for the future of the Xbox One and now it will be really interesting to see if they can claw back the early ground advantage they gave to Sony, especially now the proverbial albatross is no longer around their neck.
Edit: And frankly, the Kinect was marginalized right from the start with the Xbone. When your launch title for the Kinect is Fighter Within (and seriously, it's easily one of the worst games I've ever played) and you just throw it out there without even mentioning it, you could see the writing was on the wall. Once Microsoft were forced into a game of playing "Let's puff up our numbers by giving sold to retailers instead of sold to consumers" you knew they were in deep shit. This is precisely the response I predicted several pages ago in the thread and sorry, it was totally predictable to do this.
I'm trying to come up with an analogy to explain the lunacy of MS bundling the Kinect and forcing themselves to a $500 price point while at the same time not even trying to develop a game that needs both Kinect and the XBO's processing power, but I'm just not able to.
I always thought that the $500 price was a mistake and that linking an increase in Kinects fidelity with improved graphical fidelity was nonsense, but I also always assumed that MS would have some project in the works that would at least allow them to fool themselves into thinking that it was a good idea. But they had nothing, really nothing, absolutely nothing. I guess maybe that Ryse was suppose to be that game at one time. Certainly, I would pay good money for a book that covered the history of the XBO's development.
Anyway, the closest analogy I could get was that MS was calling someone's all in bet with nothing and thinking that they were bluffing like pros. Hopefully someone can do better.
lowlylowlycook on
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
0
Options
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2014
Kinectless cheaper Xbone?
Not the most unsurprising thing, but you could hit it with a rock from here. And most of the surprise is from Microsoft taking this long to do it.
I'm trying to come up with an analogy to explain the lunacy of MS bundling the Kinect and forcing themselves to a $500 price point while at the same time not even trying to develop a game that needs both Kinect and the XBO's processing power, but I'm just not able to.
Eh, this was the same group that pitched the most universally-reviled and greedy new console announcement yet as "good for consumers", all the while trying to lie to people about exclusives and after spending months trying to strongarm other companies into their great "vision" of the next generation of consoles.
"Idiotic clusterfuck" is about all we need to describe Microsoft's initial approach to this latest console generation, and they've been trying to patch the damage ever since.
Im guessing the announcement stems from the fact that the news would've gotten out before they hit stores anyway, so its better to control the news and proactively announce it themselves.
What I didn't expect is them announcing it a month in advance, effectively tanking their May sales
shrug, preorders are almost as good, and when you're this early in the generation they needed to clear this out before e3 assuming they have anything of consequence to show.
because if they didn't you'd have no idea what they talked about at e3 but this.
+1
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
Im guessing the announcement stems from the fact that the news would've gotten out before they hit stores anyway, so its better to control the news and proactively announce it themselves.
Say what you will, they have learned obvious lessons since DRM-gate last year.
So...has Microsoft said anything about a buyback program for retailers? Because if not, they might be a tad pissed.
Yeah at my local EB they have something like 18ish titanfall bundles out back, several normal editions and even a couple of day 1s. Those are going to be damn hard to move now, but I am going to guess Microsoft will announce a sale or something to move the old kinect stock out.
Thinking about it like this now you bring it up, that "5 million shipped to retailers" figure now looks dreadfully bad. That's ~1 million worth of stock that just got undercut by a cheaper model.
the thing is that stuff will still eventually move, as there is obviously still a market for the kinect. But theres really no way to avoid that. Like what are they supposed to do, keep selling a system just to avoid a one month backlog? im guessing this is all part of their projections and it still ended up being a better idea to go with the new kit
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited May 2014
I'm thinking what drove this is the clear defeat they suffered when the PS4, without really anything majorly hyped or significant coming out (other than the good, but not astounding in any notable way, Infamous Second Son) still beat them in sales numbers by a clear margin when they released Titanfall. As I wrote at the time, it absolutely forced Microsoft to do something about it: They could no longer ignore the problem that the price difference was giving them. To borrow Jerry's words for a moment, when the guys at Redmond saw Titanfall failing to boost their consoles sales enough to outsell the PS4 in either the UK or US, it was probably what it was like being in Alderaan seeing the lasers of the Death Star charging up.
At that point you can stay on the planet and explode with it, or do something about it.
Edit: Though technically speaking this is the certain apocalypse for motion controlled video games.
I imagine they must have also taken a look at any Kinect games in the pipeline to see if anything could be "The One" and ultimately realized they had Jack McFucking Squat.
4 years and Kinect's shining star is that... it's actually a pretty decent voice controlled remote control. That's not actually such a terrible thing to be. But it's also the thing better suited to secondary peripheral status.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
0
Options
AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
It's really worse than that as the Kinects real shining moment was Dance Central, which a lot of people bought (including me) and really loved.
Then every sequel sold progressively worse, as the original Dance Central was around 2.5 million, Dance Central 2 around 1.6 million and I can't actually find a figure for Dance Central 3 (which doesn't bode well).
To be honest, there is your story about the rise and (now) fall of the Kinect right in there.
the thing is that stuff will still eventually move, as there is obviously still a market for the kinect. But theres really no way to avoid that. Like what are they supposed to do, keep selling a system just to avoid a one month backlog? im guessing this is all part of their projections and it still ended up being a better idea to go with the new kit
Oh, sure. This is definitely something that needed to happen (though I was expecting them to roll this out during the holiday season). I'm just curious about what MS is going to do should retailers yell at them. Yes, they could move them eventually, but they're going to want them out the door ASAP to make room for the new units. Space isn't free, after all. If MS is smart enough to make this move, I'm sure they're smart enough to have some sort of buyback or rebate program in the works. I was just wondering if they've said anything on the matter.
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
What a day for the kinectless One to come out, my afternoon was a fucking nightmare.
Excitedly headed home after work to hook my new xbox up, after waiting for the stupid thing to be delivered for 14 days I had high expectations. Moved things around AV wise, set everything up, console boots up great, I even remember at the time being very impressed at how easy the setup was. The thing did a giant firmware update then went through the first steps with me, I set up the kinect and marvelled at how great the video quality was and was excited to be able to skype with my parents and show off the new baby in a couple months. I started poking around the UI and saw the 'update controller' section and remembered that hey, I should do that!
When controller firmware update had finished and I dumped back into the main OS I think to myself "huh, that's a weird box up there, what does that say? Kinect discconnected? Boy that is weird?"
After an hour of trying every single workaround ever printed for this issue, and it seems to be pretty widespread based on some googling, and yup, my fucking Kinect suffered some sort of major power loss and died about 15 minutes after being turned on. GREAT FIRST TIME EXPERIENCE! Next I got to enjoy the fun of trying to contact Xbox Support!
Turns out that MS won't send the replacement to you first through their web form so easy enough, I'll just do a web chat instead. After going through everything with the web chat guy "oh sorry, through this interface we can't do what you want, you need to call in if you want a replacement sent to you first". Go to call in, 30 minute wait printed on website, where it offers to setup a callback instead, try to do that and the website errors out and starts giving me xbox.com errors. Try it again no go. Phone instead, 10 minutes into the wait, boom disconnected. Phone again, somehow this time I get into a queue where it offers to call me back 34 - 52 minutes later when the next available operator is free, so I do that. 40 minutes later my phone rings, I pick it up aaaaaand instead of talking to a person I'm then put on hold for the next 30 or so minutes.
Eventually I finally talk to a guy and we set up a replacement service, he says he's never heard/seen this issue before and it can't be very common (I have my doubts), explains the RMA process to me, it's nice and under warranty, they'll send one out to me within 48 hours and then I just send it back a week later when it arrives in the same box, easy peasy!!! And then he asks me for my credit card info so that I can pay for shipping.
Let's just say asking me to pay for a shipping on a RMA on a product that was DOA did not go over very well.
Anyways what a fucking cluster fuck, I got too many shades of dealing with 360 hardware supports over the past 8 years and this is not a good thing. I played a little bit of Forza but was just kinda bummed out about the whole thing and eventually just watched Game of Thrones with my wife. So yay first time Xbox One experience, all you guys buying the kinectless version I guess are making the right call
Hardtarget if it's any consolation, as I was posting here during my lunch break after I found out about the price drop, you're the first person I thought of
After seeing your post yesterday about not getting it, I was like "oh man he'll be so pissed if he gets it today"
It's really worse than that as the Kinects real shining moment was Dance Central, which a lot of people bought (including me) and really loved.
Then every sequel sold progressively worse, as the original Dance Central was around 2.5 million, Dance Central 2 around 1.6 million and I can't actually find a figure for Dance Central 3 (which doesn't bode well).
To be honest, there is your story about the rise and (now) fall of the Kinect right in there.
I still believe the biggest missed opportunity for selling the new Kinect gaming wise, was not having sports Rivals on the same F2P model that Killer Instinct had. Critics might hate the game, but I assure you more people would have played it, had more opportunity to purchase events. Same with the likes of a future Dance Central etc.
The biggest worry right now, and even though its a rumour, is MS courting to developers the idea of using the extra processing power of a sans Kinect machine. That happens and all this talk of continued support just won't happen and just passes on to consumers the message that Kinect made your games worse.
0
Options
HardtargetThere Are Four LightsVancouverRegistered Userregular
Hardtarget if it's any consolation, as I was posting here during my lunch break after I found out about the price drop, you're the first person I thought of
After seeing your post yesterday about not getting it, I was like "oh man he'll be so pissed if he gets it today"
Thankfully I wanted the kinect version, we're having a baby in August and my parents live a 5 hour flight away, being able to use Skype from the living room seems like it'll be amazing
with that said I'm pretty pissed about what happened with my Kinect, how does something like this even happen. I would get if it was just dead to begin with, but the thing worked great for 15 minutes and then died! ugh And now another 2 weeks give or take until I have, hopefully, full functionality from a piece of electronics I ordered on May 1st.
(oh and also my stupid copy of Ryse still hasn't arrived yet, so frustrating with this whole experience lol)
Anyways the paywall takedown was also awesome news for me today
I finally bought a new 360 this weekend, slim black model, which is awesome because every time I booted up my old white one from 2009 I got the fears that it was gonna die
This new one is so silent, I love it
But yeah, my Gold lapses in June and now I don't have to re-up, which is awesome because I use my PS4 for all my normal streaming needs, but the HBO Go app isn't on PS4 yet and the PS3 one is awful (I'm not sure why!), but the 360 HBO Go is pretty acceptable as far as video quality
So basically Game of Thrones is the reason I'm happy about today's news
I just realized something -- this could free up Rare to actually do something interesting for the first time since Lego Banjo.
...or they could just switch from ripping off Wii Sports to ripping off whichever game they feel will sell. Whichever.
Rare's dead man, dead.
Its a shell of its former self. Better to ask for a Rare title relieved by a studio with more experience than hoping Rare makes another AAA title.
+1
Options
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
+5
Options
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
On a more serious note, if I felt like it, I might go digging through the Xbox One thread around the time of June 2013, the E3 reveal, where I made numerous posts about how Microsoft would eventually have to cave and remove the Kinect.
As I said earlier, they've fallen into this trap where they're 'listening' to what people say they want but in reality it's all pretty much bullshit. I think they're being played like fools and that there's this subconscious effort from the gaming community (and press) to see how far they can push MS into another 180 or absurd announcement to pander to people who never intend to buy the machine in the first place and in reality what they really want is to see it fail;
"Always online? Fuck you Microsoft!"
"Well we got them to remove always online, what other excuse can we come up with not to buy this console? Oh, the Kinect, Fuck that noise"
"Oh okay, well they've removed the Kinect, what next? Hey, MS, we want the XB1 to be shaped like a giant donut and instead of boring analog sticks we want them shaped like little dildos".
"Right, so you've given us the DoBox with it's Dildo Stick Controller, but I'm still not convinced. Can you make the next iteration give me a reacharound?"
"Meh, the squeeze to stroke ratio of your reacharound system isn't all that... how about you include a unicorn?"
"MY FREE UNICORN ONLY HAS ONE HORN, FUCK YOU!"
Meanwhile the people who keep demanding all this are pissing themselves with laughter because they can't believe MS keep giving in to them and MS don't understand what the fuck is happening because they see Sony apparently listening and reacting to their customers and doing no wrong and they've not even had to pump billions of dollars into Unicorn R&D.
So, on the one hand we have a crazy conspiracy theory that people are lying to Microsoft without knowing they are lying to Microsoft about what they want in a console for shits and giggles...
And on the other hand we have the idea that people buy what they think is a better value, and that people did not value the Kinect being worth an additional hundred dollars over a PS4.
Maaaaaan it is really tough to decide which of these two very compelling theories sounds more plausible.
The Xbox WITH Kinect and Titanfall was reduced to the same price as the PS4 in the UK and it still failed to make an impact but you keep telling yourself that what people really want was a cheaper SKU without Kinect. You can already see the excuses being put forward now that you're paying the same price as a PS4 for a weaker console and that it needs to be cheaper still.
And they aren't removing the kinect. You can still buy it, they're just recognising they're being outsold. I would be shocked if they made the decision based on ign commenters, rather than the far more likely reality that their own research, projections, and management, showed that the kinect wasn't boosting sales, and was acting as a wall to lower budget buyers desperately needed to broaden the One's install base.
Being the weaker console never hurt 360. And the uk example is one small example over a small period of time. This decision is likely made with long term projections in mind.
Ostensibly although Microsoft might say things like "we're responding to customer feedback", the far more likely reason is that the kinect appeal has shrunk in the wake of tablet and mobile gaming, and that there isn't any indication it will grow enough that people will buy consoles for kinect games. Ie, the kind of people the kinect was meant to attract aren't being attracted, so there's no point in sticking to selling it as mandatory. Instead it will remain a niche secondary peripheral, which it really always has been game-wise, regardless of what MS touted it as
Nothing has really changed outside of Microsoft seeing the kinect the way we all see it, as a secondary peripheral. It's still available, it's still going to get the occasional game, it's not like they've discontinued support. They are just positioning it in a realistic way.
Oh man, I'm just now reading about the Kinectless console release. I could have spent all night last night making snarky comments. God, what a waste.
I just want to go back in time to last year and relive all of their comments about how the Kinect is just super duper integral to their system and they totally CANT release a console without it, it's just that goddamn important.
Well I guess this means I can get one now. Assuming they have some exclusives that make me want to. Oh what a coincidence that this news came out and E3 is just next month.
+3
Options
syndalisGetting ClassyOn the WallRegistered User, Loves Apple Productsregular
I mean, it is telling at at least half if not more of the people who are saying "great I can buy one now" in this thread are also saying "... when there are exclusives I want to play, and there is a price cut, and maybe a slimmer model"
I mean, maybe this will be the thing they needed to take the lead in the USA. But I kind of feel like they were already doing amazing by any metric but in comparison to the fastest selling console of all time, and all this move will accomplish in the short term is weaken confidence in their brand or ability to deliver on big picture visions.
I would rather have a 2nd place console I loved than a 1st place console that did all of its coloring inside the lines.
SW-4158-3990-6116
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
Posts
http://news.xbox.com/2014/04/ent-xbox-one-tv-tools-and-smartglass
As for the Kinect thing, it makes sense. Theyre not abandoning it, it just didnt make sense to keep pushing it as a core gaming peripheral when no games would or could make use of it, and those that did didnt sell. I love the Kinect for its UI and voice stuff (xbox record that), but I will not argue that its anything but a gimmick. Like I love gimmicks, and some tech people do too, but if its not pushing units then theres no sense in making it mandatory. Support and R&D might not be as strong, but its not like itll be left broken, its still a perfectly functioning bit of tech if you want it, it just wasnt selling games, and honestly looked like it never would.
As for lack of differentiation, itll come down to exclusives, or controller/UI preferences. A very small market will actually care that its slightly weaker in tech, as was the case last gen. PS4 sold better because it launched in more places, cheaper, and with a stronger and simpler message of familiarity, not because of slightly more ps in their 1080ps
I don't mean to go all "I told you so", but I have been saying this for a long time and when Kinect Sports Rivals completely flopped there was clearly no future for the kinect. I mean it's had what, an incredibly shitty fighting game that's probably one of the worst games on either platform (Fighter Within) and Kinect Sports Rivals was basically crapware and sunk like a lead coated rock? What was the value in losing so much ground to Sony in maintaining a $100 price difference for a piece of hardware that wasn't functioning as an actually relevant, useful part of the gaming machine? The casual market that ate Kinect up and bought the crapware to support it has gone, just like how Nintendo found the waggle loving market disappeared to cellphones and the WiiU is tanking.
This is seriously the absolute best thing that Microsoft could have done for the future of the Xbox One and now it will be really interesting to see if they can claw back the early ground advantage they gave to Sony, especially now the proverbial albatross is no longer around their neck.
Edit: And frankly, the Kinect was marginalized right from the start with the Xbone. When your launch title for the Kinect is Fighter Within (and seriously, it's easily one of the worst games I've ever played) and you just throw it out there without even mentioning it, you could see the writing was on the wall. Once Microsoft were forced into a game of playing "Let's puff up our numbers by giving sold to retailers instead of sold to consumers" you knew they were in deep shit. This is precisely the response I predicted several pages ago in the thread and sorry, it was totally predictable to do this.
This is separate from "Ill buy it when they drop the kinect" people, who may or may not have been goalpost movers, this is a broader market of people who will buy either whats popular or whats cheapest.
With equal price points, it comes down to more nebulous preferences like exclusives, controllers, familiarity, etc.
Also the fact that there is a more expensive version out there which comes with the kinect, might help a lot of casual buyers see the 400$ kinectless version as a "steal".
I know its all armchair psychology but thats my feelings about it anyway
Also anyone saying the Xbox One will fail or something like that is living in a cookoo clock. It could have half the sales it has right now and it would still be a success, especially since the fight for the attention of gamers has intensified with tablet and mobile games, and cheaper PCs compared to the beginning of last gen.
Considering this is a new bundle, I would be surprised if there isn't an IR blaster for that port included in the box.
I'd be surprised if they did that instead of saying "buy a kinect." But really, all bets are off at this point.
Again, please don't take my following comment as being antagonistic towards your disappointment, but last year in June/July 2013 I pretty much told you that Kinect was never going to get this ever. Kinect has had years on the 360 to do something interesting beyond showing that it's the most superior device you can think of for making a dancing game. There were attempts to do things with the Kinect last generation that were novel or interesting, but they turned out to be complete failures. Rise of Nightmares tried to be a novel horror experience using the Kinect, Steel Battalion attempted to make a split kinect/controller based games (and is by far, one of the worst efforts the Kinect ever saw) and when it did work, it worked for a particular genre really well in Dance Central.
This sort of statement was not correct a year ago and still isn't now. The Kinect got the experiments it needed to see if it could make genuinely compelling games using it: They failed*. The Xbone Kinect demonstrated right off the bat it still couldn't do anything novel, interesting or worthwhile to justify that $100 difference. Just look at Fighter Within and Kinect Sports Rivals (where like the previous kinect, half the games practically don't work when you might expect them to do so).
And as wonderful as Dance Central and Fantasia are, they appealed to the casual market and Microsoft - quite smartly - has figured out what people all over the internet have been saying since the WiiU tanked. That market is gone. There is no point investing in the future of Kinect in Dancing/Music games to appeal to a casual market that buys these things, which is no longer interested in buying them because they are tapping at Candy Crush on their phone.
Being blunt: Microsoft gambled on the Kinect on the xbone hoping that the casual market that bought it was still there. They gambled and lost, much like another company beginning with an N....
Edit: And I'm pretty happy about this. I convinced my wife to hold off on getting an Xbone because I thought there would either be a price drop or a booting of the kinect at E3. So this pretty much saves us a fair chunk of money on the system and with entertainment apps also being made free, saves us a huge chunk of money on needing a subscription (and makes the Xbone a lot more useful to us as well).
*Or alternatively, narrowly succeeded within a specific sub-genre.
Nah
It's an absolutely gorgeous game, maybe the best-looking game I've seen to date
But nothing I've seen about the gameplay seems like it will interest me, and I don't trust Insomniac to make good games anymore. The last game of theirs I really enjoyed was R&C: Tools of Destruction way back in 2007
I'm trying to come up with an analogy to explain the lunacy of MS bundling the Kinect and forcing themselves to a $500 price point while at the same time not even trying to develop a game that needs both Kinect and the XBO's processing power, but I'm just not able to.
I always thought that the $500 price was a mistake and that linking an increase in Kinects fidelity with improved graphical fidelity was nonsense, but I also always assumed that MS would have some project in the works that would at least allow them to fool themselves into thinking that it was a good idea. But they had nothing, really nothing, absolutely nothing. I guess maybe that Ryse was suppose to be that game at one time. Certainly, I would pay good money for a book that covered the history of the XBO's development.
Anyway, the closest analogy I could get was that MS was calling someone's all in bet with nothing and thinking that they were bluffing like pros. Hopefully someone can do better.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Not the most unsurprising thing, but you could hit it with a rock from here. And most of the surprise is from Microsoft taking this long to do it.
Eh, this was the same group that pitched the most universally-reviled and greedy new console announcement yet as "good for consumers", all the while trying to lie to people about exclusives and after spending months trying to strongarm other companies into their great "vision" of the next generation of consoles.
"Idiotic clusterfuck" is about all we need to describe Microsoft's initial approach to this latest console generation, and they've been trying to patch the damage ever since.
What I didn't expect is them announcing it a month in advance, effectively tanking their May sales
shrug, preorders are almost as good, and when you're this early in the generation they needed to clear this out before e3 assuming they have anything of consequence to show.
because if they didn't you'd have no idea what they talked about at e3 but this.
Say what you will, they have learned obvious lessons since DRM-gate last year.
Steam: pazython
Yeah at my local EB they have something like 18ish titanfall bundles out back, several normal editions and even a couple of day 1s. Those are going to be damn hard to move now, but I am going to guess Microsoft will announce a sale or something to move the old kinect stock out.
Thinking about it like this now you bring it up, that "5 million shipped to retailers" figure now looks dreadfully bad. That's ~1 million worth of stock that just got undercut by a cheaper model.
At that point you can stay on the planet and explode with it, or do something about it.
Edit: Though technically speaking this is the certain apocalypse for motion controlled video games.
And good riddance.
4 years and Kinect's shining star is that... it's actually a pretty decent voice controlled remote control. That's not actually such a terrible thing to be. But it's also the thing better suited to secondary peripheral status.
Then every sequel sold progressively worse, as the original Dance Central was around 2.5 million, Dance Central 2 around 1.6 million and I can't actually find a figure for Dance Central 3 (which doesn't bode well).
To be honest, there is your story about the rise and (now) fall of the Kinect right in there.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Oh, sure. This is definitely something that needed to happen (though I was expecting them to roll this out during the holiday season). I'm just curious about what MS is going to do should retailers yell at them. Yes, they could move them eventually, but they're going to want them out the door ASAP to make room for the new units. Space isn't free, after all. If MS is smart enough to make this move, I'm sure they're smart enough to have some sort of buyback or rebate program in the works. I was just wondering if they've said anything on the matter.
Steam: pazython
Excitedly headed home after work to hook my new xbox up, after waiting for the stupid thing to be delivered for 14 days I had high expectations. Moved things around AV wise, set everything up, console boots up great, I even remember at the time being very impressed at how easy the setup was. The thing did a giant firmware update then went through the first steps with me, I set up the kinect and marvelled at how great the video quality was and was excited to be able to skype with my parents and show off the new baby in a couple months. I started poking around the UI and saw the 'update controller' section and remembered that hey, I should do that!
When controller firmware update had finished and I dumped back into the main OS I think to myself "huh, that's a weird box up there, what does that say? Kinect discconnected? Boy that is weird?"
After an hour of trying every single workaround ever printed for this issue, and it seems to be pretty widespread based on some googling, and yup, my fucking Kinect suffered some sort of major power loss and died about 15 minutes after being turned on. GREAT FIRST TIME EXPERIENCE! Next I got to enjoy the fun of trying to contact Xbox Support!
Turns out that MS won't send the replacement to you first through their web form so easy enough, I'll just do a web chat instead. After going through everything with the web chat guy "oh sorry, through this interface we can't do what you want, you need to call in if you want a replacement sent to you first". Go to call in, 30 minute wait printed on website, where it offers to setup a callback instead, try to do that and the website errors out and starts giving me xbox.com errors. Try it again no go. Phone instead, 10 minutes into the wait, boom disconnected. Phone again, somehow this time I get into a queue where it offers to call me back 34 - 52 minutes later when the next available operator is free, so I do that. 40 minutes later my phone rings, I pick it up aaaaaand instead of talking to a person I'm then put on hold for the next 30 or so minutes.
Eventually I finally talk to a guy and we set up a replacement service, he says he's never heard/seen this issue before and it can't be very common (I have my doubts), explains the RMA process to me, it's nice and under warranty, they'll send one out to me within 48 hours and then I just send it back a week later when it arrives in the same box, easy peasy!!! And then he asks me for my credit card info so that I can pay for shipping.
Let's just say asking me to pay for a shipping on a RMA on a product that was DOA did not go over very well.
Anyways what a fucking cluster fuck, I got too many shades of dealing with 360 hardware supports over the past 8 years and this is not a good thing. I played a little bit of Forza but was just kinda bummed out about the whole thing and eventually just watched Game of Thrones with my wife. So yay first time Xbox One experience, all you guys buying the kinectless version I guess are making the right call
After seeing your post yesterday about not getting it, I was like "oh man he'll be so pissed if he gets it today"
I still believe the biggest missed opportunity for selling the new Kinect gaming wise, was not having sports Rivals on the same F2P model that Killer Instinct had. Critics might hate the game, but I assure you more people would have played it, had more opportunity to purchase events. Same with the likes of a future Dance Central etc.
The biggest worry right now, and even though its a rumour, is MS courting to developers the idea of using the extra processing power of a sans Kinect machine. That happens and all this talk of continued support just won't happen and just passes on to consumers the message that Kinect made your games worse.
with that said I'm pretty pissed about what happened with my Kinect, how does something like this even happen. I would get if it was just dead to begin with, but the thing worked great for 15 minutes and then died! ugh And now another 2 weeks give or take until I have, hopefully, full functionality from a piece of electronics I ordered on May 1st.
(oh and also my stupid copy of Ryse still hasn't arrived yet, so frustrating with this whole experience lol)
I finally bought a new 360 this weekend, slim black model, which is awesome because every time I booted up my old white one from 2009 I got the fears that it was gonna die
This new one is so silent, I love it
But yeah, my Gold lapses in June and now I don't have to re-up, which is awesome because I use my PS4 for all my normal streaming needs, but the HBO Go app isn't on PS4 yet and the PS3 one is awful (I'm not sure why!), but the 360 HBO Go is pretty acceptable as far as video quality
So basically Game of Thrones is the reason I'm happy about today's news
Rare's dead man, dead.
Its a shell of its former self. Better to ask for a Rare title relieved by a studio with more experience than hoping Rare makes another AAA title.
"Always online? Fuck you Microsoft!"
"Well we got them to remove always online, what other excuse can we come up with not to buy this console? Oh, the Kinect, Fuck that noise"
"Oh okay, well they've removed the Kinect, what next? Hey, MS, we want the XB1 to be shaped like a giant donut and instead of boring analog sticks we want them shaped like little dildos".
"Right, so you've given us the DoBox with it's Dildo Stick Controller, but I'm still not convinced. Can you make the next iteration give me a reacharound?"
"Meh, the squeeze to stroke ratio of your reacharound system isn't all that... how about you include a unicorn?"
"MY FREE UNICORN ONLY HAS ONE HORN, FUCK YOU!"
Meanwhile the people who keep demanding all this are pissing themselves with laughter because they can't believe MS keep giving in to them and MS don't understand what the fuck is happening because they see Sony apparently listening and reacting to their customers and doing no wrong and they've not even had to pump billions of dollars into Unicorn R&D.
And on the other hand we have the idea that people buy what they think is a better value, and that people did not value the Kinect being worth an additional hundred dollars over a PS4.
Maaaaaan it is really tough to decide which of these two very compelling theories sounds more plausible.
And they aren't removing the kinect. You can still buy it, they're just recognising they're being outsold. I would be shocked if they made the decision based on ign commenters, rather than the far more likely reality that their own research, projections, and management, showed that the kinect wasn't boosting sales, and was acting as a wall to lower budget buyers desperately needed to broaden the One's install base.
Being the weaker console never hurt 360. And the uk example is one small example over a small period of time. This decision is likely made with long term projections in mind.
Ostensibly although Microsoft might say things like "we're responding to customer feedback", the far more likely reason is that the kinect appeal has shrunk in the wake of tablet and mobile gaming, and that there isn't any indication it will grow enough that people will buy consoles for kinect games. Ie, the kind of people the kinect was meant to attract aren't being attracted, so there's no point in sticking to selling it as mandatory. Instead it will remain a niche secondary peripheral, which it really always has been game-wise, regardless of what MS touted it as
Nothing has really changed outside of Microsoft seeing the kinect the way we all see it, as a secondary peripheral. It's still available, it's still going to get the occasional game, it's not like they've discontinued support. They are just positioning it in a realistic way.
Xbox | x Dredgen Yor x |
I just want to go back in time to last year and relive all of their comments about how the Kinect is just super duper integral to their system and they totally CANT release a console without it, it's just that goddamn important.
Well I guess this means I can get one now. Assuming they have some exclusives that make me want to. Oh what a coincidence that this news came out and E3 is just next month.
I mean, maybe this will be the thing they needed to take the lead in the USA. But I kind of feel like they were already doing amazing by any metric but in comparison to the fastest selling console of all time, and all this move will accomplish in the short term is weaken confidence in their brand or ability to deliver on big picture visions.
I would rather have a 2nd place console I loved than a 1st place console that did all of its coloring inside the lines.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...