Kinect-less XB1 fallout thread *spawn

[RancidLunchmeat]

MS just lost with this move. $399 with Kinect is worth it. Without it only 299..

No matter what its still less powerful than PS4. Don Mattrick really left them in hole.

Yep. As we discussed earlier, if they wanted to drop to $399 it might have been a good idea if Kinect was still included.

Dropping to $399 while also removing functionality is not a good price/performance trade-off. If they were going to remove functionality, Kinect, BluRay, both, whatever - they needed to drop below the price of the PS4 in order to compensate.

Fact of the matter is, the One should already be priced below the PS4 for the simple reason that you've stated - the PS4 is superior technologically. At least in terms of gaming performance, which is the only thing the One has left now that they've killed Kinect.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I see this as the first step in the death of the One

 

[-tkf-]

What a strange decision.

So for $399 I can get PS4 or a weaker PS4? Why would I do that?

It is hard to imagine the XBox one without voice.

Well for one, you can still buy a Kinect 2 and make it a "real" XBOX ONE.

I think this shows that Microsoft is back in the game, they want the XBOX ONE to stay, yes they have been falling on swords since the incredible crappy reveal, the swords may hurt, but it´s alright, it keeps Sony honest and the our little world much much better.

The ego in me wanted the XB1 to be 399 with Kinect, that would have been a much stronger play.

AND!, welcome to 2006 with the Gold/Silver/Live crap, about freaking time.. and someone tell me what GAME DVR is on the 360?

 

[Scott_Arm]

I don't think the price is too bad. Ideally, if they're not going to compete by differentiating on features, the price should be lower than PS4, but $300 is way lower than is reasonable. $350 or 375 would be about right.

 

[messyman]

Ironically the PS4 supports voice control out of the box (altho not as good).

 

[3dilettante]

Claiming the death knell of the Xbox One aside, it does seem that Microsoft no longer has it as the primary carrier for insinuating Microsoft into the consumer's digital home. I'm repeating myself, but I'm wondering if it's because Microsoft is now a provider of the devices that everyone speculates is undercutting the consoles in the first place.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

Well for one, you can still buy a Kinect 2 and make it a "real" XBOX ONE.

Yeah, but if you really feel that way you'd better do it quickly before they run out of current inventory.

There's no way they've made a decision to continue manufacturing bundles or individual Kinect2 units along with a parallel decision that it was required to be removed in order to get to price parity with the PS4.

And of course, why you would want to buy a Kinect2 when this announcement ends all future support for the device and will also change current functionality because the UI of the One will necessarily need be altered is another question.

 

[djskribbles]

I don't think the price is too bad. Ideally, if they're not going to compete by differentiating on features, the price should be lower than PS4, but $300 is way lower than is reasonable. $350 or 375 would be about right.

We've essentially seen the Xbox One sell for less than 399 WITH Kinect (Titanfall bundle for $449) and the PS4 still managed to outsell the Xbox One in the US. In the UK, they temporarily sold the Titanfall bundle for the same price as the PS4 and they seemed to be selling closely (judging by amazon, which isn't the greatest gauge).

That said, I think 399 will help. Even though the Titanfall bundle was sold at a better value, the fact that the Xbox One is <$400 just looks more appealing. Should have made it 349 though, and 449 with Kinect.

 

[Scott_Arm]

I actually don't expect the UI to be changed much at all. I'm guessing they will stick to the tile layout. They will probably have to find a way to streamline access to some features with the controller, but overall I think it'll stay as a tile layout.

 

[Inuhanyou]

so Microsoft suddenly realized that their previous pushes were complete and absolute failures and reversed course on many policies. Good, now i'll probably get one in 3 years when the price is 299 instead of 6 years. Unfortunate that they waited this long, but whatever.

 

[AzBat]

We've essentially seen the Xbox One sell for less than 399 WITH Kinect (Titanfall bundle for $449) and the PS4 still managed to outsell the Xbox One in the US. In the UK, they temporarily sold the Titanfall bundle for the same price as the PS4 and they seemed to be selling closely (judging by amazon, which isn't the greatest gauge).

That said, I think 399 will help. Even though the Titanfall bundle was sold at a better value, the fact that the Xbox One is <$400 just looks more appealing. Should have made it 349 though, and 449 with Kinect.

Maybe they didn't want to drop the price until fall? Maybe dropping it now when demand is lower is not such a smart move? I could conceivably seeing a $350/$450 later on. I suspect the Kinect SKU will include a game or two as well. What I find interesting is the disclaimer on the Xbox One Games with Gold feature mentions "Kinect and/or hard drive required for some games." Why mention hard drive if you don't plan on releasing a SKU without one?

Tommy McClain

 

[pjbliverpool]

Skype and other non-console things become significantly hobbled if Kinect drops out.

This was my first thought. The irony is that Skype was one of the biggest selling points for me and the fact that it was behind the paywall was putting me off. Now it's no longer behind the paywall but it's value is diminished thanks to the Kinectless SKU.

I still intend to pick up an XB1 at some point if the social/party games that use Kinect warrant it but this move now casts further doubt on that ever being the case.

 

[djskribbles]

Maybe they didn't want to drop the price until fall? Maybe dropping it now when demand is lower is not such a smart move? I could conceivably seeing a $350/$450 later on. I suspect the Kinect SKU will include a game or two as well. What I find interesting is the disclaimer on the Xbox One Games with Gold feature mentions "Kinect and/or hard drive required for some games." Why mention hard drive if don't plan on releasing a SKU without one?

Tommy McClain

I can't see them dropping the price of a recently announced SKU, only if they're forced to due to lower than expected sales. At best they'll make a bundle. And even if sales remain underwhelming, then I think they should just wait until next year and drop it to 299/399 respectively.

Also, I can't see them releasing an HDDless SKU if that's what you're hinting at. A SKU without a Blu-Ray drive makes more sense, and even that I find unlikely. Odd that they mentioned that.

 

[joker454]

The mobile acquisition may the reason why Microsoft might have gone this route, or it is indicative of the overal motivation of the company rather than what the Xbox division wanted to do about half a year into a generation.

With MS moving more and more towards being a services company, maybe stuff like Kinect standard doesn't make sense anymore. Their primary goal may be the unification of all platforms and services which means they need to make the XB1 as cheap as possible to get it into peoples homes to then upsell them to MS services like OneDrive, Skype, Apps, Outlook, Office, Bing, etc.What they want is hardware out there that is unified with their phones, tablets and pc's and gets people hooked on their services. In that respect killing off Kinect (by making it optional) isn't a big deal to them as maybe it's not a major part of their revenue plans or goals anymore. In that respect I doubt Xbox is driving the show anymore.

To me that means they will have to get more aggressive on price though. $399 makes sense now because it lets them get more aggressive come Christmas time to move more MS Service Boxes (ie, Xbox One's) into people's homes.

 

[eastmen]

This is a huge mistake from MS .

As an early adopter I'm quite upset with this, there are few games for Kinect and now thanks to this it will stay that way. While I love it for voice controls , knowing it was in with every system sold bolsted my confidence in it getting more games through its life. Now the lack of games will keep more people away from it and in turn reduce the amount of games we get.

Whats more , there is no sorry to early adopters , at least when Nintendo did this to me with the 3ds they gave me a bunch of games

 

[Jwm]

I do not see the competition moving to a lower price (mainly due to stuff), but wow would that be a kick in the pants. You go $399, they go $379... PR war is still lost.

I think for MS $449 and $349 makes better sense if your goal is to jump sales. Plus what will be the price of a standalone Kinect - not $99 when the old model is more. So now if I jump on the new SKU, I will pay more most likely to fully upgrade it. Brillant!

They also say 80% are using VC, so that is interesting.

In my tinfoil hat moments -

Spoiler

I still wonder if Kinect was part of a larger VR/AR goal, with all three parts working together. Controller has IR, Kinect can track that, plus add in VR/AR which Kinect would also surely track. So if this is added in the future, we will need another bundle more.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Yeah, but if you really feel that way you'd better do it quickly before they run out of current inventory.

As long as they can sell Kinect 2 at a profit, they'll continue to manufacture and sell them. I'd be surprised if they've covered the R&D on this with sales to date, even if they break them down into profits per component (Xbox One, Kinect 2) internally.

Unfortunately if you sell something on a promise (Kinect 2) it's not really an option to just dump it because people will be wary of buying your stuff next year. How many folks avoided Zune because Microsoft established PlaysForSure in a blaze or promise then ignored it themselves?

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is a huge mistake from MS .

As an early adopter I'm quite upset with this, there are few games for Kinect and now thanks to this it will stay that way. While I love it for voice controls , knowing it was in with every system sold bolsted my confidence in it getting more games through its life. Now the lack of games will keep more people away from it and in turn reduce the amount of games we get.

Whats more , there is no sorry to early adopters , at least when Nintendo did this to me with the 3ds they gave me a bunch of games

I'm bummed about it a bit, but that's the price of being an early adopter. Sometimes products fail. The market has spoken. People don't want to pay for it. I'll keep my fingers crossed that there will be some apps that make interesting use of it, but I'm not counting on it. Games never really seemed to be the place where Kinect would shine, so much as the OS and applications. It seems like even the exclusive titles are not going to make use of Kinect. We know Fable wasn't going to, Titanfall didn't, and now Sunset Overdrive appears to be Kinect Free. There wasn't any talk of Quantum Break using it either.

 

[Jwm]

Absolutely, whatever your ultimate feeling is about the decision, they just removed the only differentiating factor between the two consoles. Except for the clearly superior performance of the PS4, that is.

They've killed Kinect, which might be a good business decision if there weren't any games on the horizon. But if there weren't any games on the horizon, the entire concept was absurd.

I see this as the first step in the death of the One, and I'm fine with that. First step is to kill kinect, next step is to devalue Gold memberships, the third step is a price reduction to undercut the PS4, and the final step is to announce the replacement console. Or the exit from the business entirely.

Don't really care. I don't need and don't think the market needs two nearly identical systems with only GUI differences at the same price point when one is clearly (even though not hugely), offering superior performance.

I guess this means Rare will be working on another sports game so they can bundle it with Kinect in a year.

 

[eastmen]

This is just more of a reason to make the one my last console. Both sony and ms are going to walk away from this generation thinking making the barest bones system with the most power is the only way to win. Meanwhile I will stick to the pc which is allways going to be the most powerful system.