Kinect-less XB1 fallout thread *spawn

[-tkf-]

What happened was, they chased a better Wii, got seduced by the technology, without concrete ideas on how it would enhance gameplay.

I think this is pretty much what it ended up to be, because the Kinect 2 was basicly a much improved Kinect 1, and we already knew what those games were. So Kinect 2 apparently weren't able to provide a real game changer, and Microsoft may have (finally) realized that. And that Voice/Gesture and TVTV isn´t going to sell a Gaming console, at least not today.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What happened was, they chased a better Wii, got seduced by the technology, without concrete ideas on how it would enhance gameplay.

Bang on. Kinect obsession by way of the Wii infected the minds of the suits at MS.

Once maybe, but twice?

 

[Scott_Arm]

I don't think so. This gen was based on tech that was already years old - not cutting edge. After MS cuts the One's price tag to below that of the PS4 and still fails to gain any momentum, MS will announce a successor or leave the line of business entirely.

They've made their bed with the integration of Kinect - it isn't something they can just "Drop". It's something that was vital to the vision and that's demonstrated by the fact that they've removed it and still only reached price parity with the PS4 and are supplying a weaker console.

What compelling reason is there for anybody to purchase a One over a PS4? Many PS4 purchases already said there wasn't one at a $100 premium and Kinect. But many One purchases said there was, even with the $100 price point... with kinect.

No cost premium, but no kinect? There's no reason to buy what is essentially an identical console that performs worse.

So they need to drop the price below the PS4, not equal to it. They'll probably due so for the 2014 Holiday season, but it might all be way to late at that point.

This console is now nothing like the original vision and is simply a gimped PS4.

Which, curiously enough, is very close to what Sony fans said after the original announcement and specs. That it was a gimped PS4 with an NSA spy device built in.

So now it doesn't have that and is simply a gimped PS4. Yep, I can see people lining up to buy them in droves over the equally priced, better performing PS4.

There are plenty of people who would buy a X1 because they are on Xbox Live, and all the friends they've been gaming with for the last decade are on Xbox Live. There's also exclusives, or just being a plain fanboy of the brand (plenty on this forum for either side). Despite all the talk, the experience on the two consoles is relatively the same. Yes, PS4 has a better GPU in it, but the results on screen are not nearly as far apart as the console wars make them out to be, from a practical gameplay perspective. To be totally honest, there's not a lot about X1 or PS4 that was really exciting. I bought an X1 because of Xbox Live (friends), Kinect and a couple of exclusives, and it was probably stupid to be an early adopter. There really never was, and still isn't, a reason for me to buy a PS4. X1's value is diminished to me by their second-classing Kinect. That still leaves Live and some exclusives. If I was buying a console right now, I'd still probably pick the X1 over PS4 at the same price. Neither console is a particularly great purchase right now. Maybe in the future I'll see more value in PS4. Everybody is different in where they find value. If anything, I'll probably go back to PC rather than PS4 if X1 bombs.

 

[Shortbread]

I'll probably go back to PC rather than PS4 if X1 bombs.

Funny thing you mentioned that. One of the reasons XB360 was so popular during its launch period (post launch too), was that many PC gamers purchased the system because it felt like home for the most part. Lots of great 1st person shooters, exclusives like Gears of War, unified play, great services ...which previous systems didn't offer or was terrible at delivering. Now, I see and hear many previous XB360 users flocking back to PC gaming.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

There are plenty of people who would buy a X1 because they are on Xbox Live, and all the friends they've been gaming with for the last decade are on Xbox Live.

So for you, it's all about Live and your friends. I agree, that was something that MS should have leveraged to retain their user base. Unfortunately, they haven't done so. And the further the gap between the old generation in the new (the longer you wait), the less those old consoles are being used - especially by the loyal.

As people use their last generation consoles less because there aren't good games coming out (really, it's hard to buy TItanfall for the 360 and suffer through a worse experience. It just makes more sense to wait to buy it on the One. Yet, as I wait for that to happen, they've made the one less appealing. The new generation has made the old generation less appealing and so if I do buy either console - at the holidays, or whenever, it would probably be the one that costs the same and is actually superior.

Everybody is different in where they find value. If anything, I'll probably go back to PC rather than PS4 if X1 bombs.

That makes it sound as if the only benefit MS has going for it at all is about Live, and if they could just transfer Live over to Windows PC's, you'd be tickled pink not to have either console and just pay your monthly membership fee for Live.

 

[Cyan]

Well that killed Kinect.

I'm surprised that it happened this soon, I thought they would go for the rest of the year with it. For $399, it's still not a great value proposition for the Xbox, but better. I would have prefered $399 with kinect, but my guess is that they are not losing any money on this SKU.

I can't really fathom why they had to do that. I can't even express with words how bad I feel at this news.

This is just going to marginalise the little things Kinect was used for, like voice controls and stuff like that in games. Kinect was much faster than the gamepad at some things.

I guess the R&D behind Kinect made it so expensive, and also all the extra studios to create Kinect experiences.

Now Xbox One is just more similar to PS4/WiiU

 

[Silenti]

What compelling reason is there for anybody to purchase a One over a PS4? Many PS4 purchases already said there wasn't one at a $100 premium and Kinect. But many One purchases said there was, even with the $100 price point... with kinect.

No cost premium, but no kinect? There's no reason to buy what is essentially an identical console that performs worse.

So they need to drop the price below the PS4, not equal to it. They'll probably due so for the 2014 Holiday season, but it might all be way to late at that point.

This console is now nothing like the original vision and is simply a gimped PS4.

Which, curiously enough, is very close to what Sony fans said after the original announcement and specs. That it was a gimped PS4 with an NSA spy device built in.

So now it doesn't have that and is simply a gimped PS4. Yep, I can see people lining up to buy them in droves over the equally priced, better performing PS4.

Plenty of people are already invested or simply prefer the Xbox for the controller, exclusives or the people they know are on Live. No idea how many from a market perspective of course, but there are probably a lot of people waiting on the price to fall.

 

[iroboto]

There are plenty of people who would buy a X1 because they are on Xbox Live, and all the friends they've been gaming with for the last decade are on Xbox Live. There's also exclusives, or just being a plain fanboy of the brand (plenty on this forum for either side). Despite all the talk, the experience on the two consoles is relatively the same. Yes, PS4 has a better GPU in it, but the results on screen are not nearly as far apart as the console wars make them out to be, from a practical gameplay perspective. To be totally honest, there's not a lot about X1 or PS4 that was really exciting. I bought an X1 because of Xbox Live (friends), Kinect and a couple of exclusives, and it was probably stupid to be an early adopter. There really never was, and still isn't, a reason for me to buy a PS4. X1's value is diminished to me by their second-classing Kinect. That still leaves Live and some exclusives. If I was buying a console right now, I'd still probably pick the X1 over PS4 at the same price. Neither console is a particularly great purchase right now. Maybe in the future I'll see more value in PS4. Everybody is different in where they find value. If anything, I'll probably go back to PC rather than PS4 if X1 bombs.

I feel the same way. My soul got hurt deeply when I discovered PowerVR was putting a hybrid ray tracer into their next GPU for mobile; that will really take mobile/tablet gaming to the next graphical era.

I mean, if they (Sony, MS, AMD and Nvidia) didn't want console to stagnate the graphical experience for PC, they really needed something more than unified memory architecture. Going forward the reasoning to obtain a new graphics card will be diminished if DX12 cannot offer anything more than what Kepler and GCN1.1 offer.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Funny thing you mentioned that. One of the reasons XB360 was so popular during its launch period (post launch too), was that many PC gamers purchased the system because it felt like home for the most part. Lots of great 1st person shooters, exclusives like Gears of War, unified play, great services ...which previous systems didn't offer or was terrible at delivering. Now, I see and hear many previous XB360 users flocking back to PC gaming.

Yep. I was one of those people. Xbox 360 was the first console that got online play right, had some cool exclusive games and was cheaper than upgrading my PC. I'd grown tired of hardware upgrades, driver issues, online hacks, non-standard voice comm software etc etc. Xbox 360 took the best parts of PC gaming and made it simple. If anything, I'll just go back to PC. Now that Steam pretty big and well-rounded, it has most of the amenities that the consoles offer. You can game a lot cheaper on the PC now, even the hardware is a lot cheaper than it used to be. PS4 is a low-end PC. X1 was a low-end PC with Kinect. Now it's a low-end PC like PS4. Most of the guys I game with on Xbox also game on PC, so I can easily jump back and just use X1 for sports games and the few exclusives I want.

 

[Cyan]

The Xbox One platform has been the more rapid one to respond on a number of fronts, such as design, software, and service changes. Some of it is that there was so much more that was different from the start.

The platform was ambitious and broad from the outset with a lot of moving parts and forward-looking elements.
I kind of expected Microsoft to have stayed the course longer on Kinect, though.
Technically, it was very interesting.

Making Kinect non-standard weakens the media hub functionality argument, and a primary product differentiator.
This also cuts into the potential sampling volume for improving voice, and possibly the emphasis of functions that send voice data to the server like search (going into mobile phones may have displaced this, and may be what the new New Microsoft is going to care about more).

I'm curious what finally made them pull the trigger on this.
The product was so ambitious at the outset, and it was an interesting set of toes it was stepping on.
The breadth may have also left it too reliant on things going smoothly across so many dimensions (network infrastructure, home theater, software, UI, apps, media interests, telecom interests, major content vendors, licensing, manufacturing, PR, international policy making, Azure datacenter deployment, and on and on).

I agree with you, and I gotta add that now that they killed it, I just hope that they use SHAPE and the whole audio chips within Xbox One for amazing experiences at least.

That's the only good thing about this move, in my opinion, maybe also freeing up to 10% of GPU resources.

I wish Microsoft say what good things we can expect from this, at the very least.

 

[Scott_Arm]

So for you, it's all about Live and your friends. I agree, that was something that MS should have leveraged to retain their user base. Unfortunately, they haven't done so. And the further the gap between the old generation in the new (the longer you wait), the less those old consoles are being used - especially by the loyal.

As people use their last generation consoles less because there aren't good games coming out (really, it's hard to buy TItanfall for the 360 and suffer through a worse experience. It just makes more sense to wait to buy it on the One. Yet, as I wait for that to happen, they've made the one less appealing. The new generation has made the old generation less appealing and so if I do buy either console - at the holidays, or whenever, it would probably be the one that costs the same and is actually superior.

That makes it sound as if the only benefit MS has going for it at all is about Live, and if they could just transfer Live over to Windows PC's, you'd be tickled pink not to have either console and just pay your monthly membership fee for Live.

Whenever people on this forum have asked which console they should buy, in any generation, the best answer has always been to buy the ones their friends own. Really, above all else, that is the best reason to own a console - being able to play with your friends. The consoles really aren't that far apart that it's worth sitting and playing one console by yourself while your friends are all having fun playing the other console together.

When I bought the 360, shortly after PS3 launch, PS3's online service was a complete joke. It was absolutely horrible, like they didn't realize multiplayer was important. It wasn't even an option as a purchase, because the online was so terrible. Late in the gen PS3 caught up, and now PS4s service is supposedly on-par, for the most part. So if I had to recommend a PS4 or a X1 to someone, the only question I'd ask them first is which one their friends own.

 

[blakjedi]

So all that silicon that is S.H.A.P.E.. which was a very expensive development and in cludes the Kinect sensor just goes to waste? WTF is going on at MS?

They were literally better off not realeasing until this fall with a better GPU at $500 rather than... this.

I think MS will sell off XBox now.. they cant save face with this development.

Im disgusted right now.

 

[Scott_Arm]

So all that silicon that is S.H.A.P.E.. which was a very expensive development and in cludes the Kinect sensor just goes to waste? WTF is going on at MS?

They were literally better off not realeasing until this fall with a better GPU at $500 rather than... this.

I think MS will sell off XBox now.. they cant save face with this development.

Im disgusted right now.

SHAPE does not include the Kinect sensor. SHAPE is one block in an audio processor. It's not even the entire audio processor.

Yah, sell the whole division to save face. Someone should hire you as a CEO right away.

 

[iroboto]

So all that silicon that is S.H.A.P.E.. which was a very expensive development and in cludes the Kinect sensor just goes to waste? WTF is going on at MS?

They were literally better off not realeasing until this fall with a better GPU at $500 rather than... this.

I think MS will sell off XBox now.. they cant save face with this development.

Im disgusted right now.

lol don't be angry. We still need to wait till E3, content is still king. It's not worth being angry about until we see all the cards played out.

I still want Fantasia, need a good music game.

 

[Scott_Arm]

lol don't be angry. We still need to wait till E3, content is still king. It's not worth being angry about until we see all the cards played out.

I still want Fantasia, need a good music game.

Microsoft "We're selling a bundle that does not include Kinect"
Harmonix" ... motherfuckers ..."

 

[blakjedi]

SHAPE does not include the Kinect sensor. SHAPE is one block in an audio processor. It's not even the entire audio processor.

Yah, sell the whole division to save face. Someone should hire you as a CEO right away.

um

"SHAPE is an audio block of 4 processors, and only one little of them is for echo cancelling and audio computing for kinect (vgleaks)"

Xbox is within the Devices Division which i think also includes windows phone and surface tablets...

I think your facts are wrong here.

Plus everyone including Bill Gates spoke about the possibility of sellign off the xbox brand...

What are you going on about?

 

[Cyan]

So all that silicon that is S.H.A.P.E.. which was a very expensive development and in cludes the Kinect sensor just goes to waste? WTF is going on at MS?

They were literally better off not realeasing until this fall with a better GPU at $500 rather than... this.

As pointed out before, SHAPE is not part of Kinect in any way, the Tensilica audio cores are (bkillian explained this several times) and they turn out very capable processors if freed up.

Gotta say though that had I knew this I'd buy a brand new razor for me with the price of Kinect2 and wouldn't buy the console at launch, but later.

 

[eastmen]

The only way this make sense is if they are planning a new xbox in 2016. Get the one down in price as fast as possible .

But this is just a horrible move, no idea what MS is thinking at all.

 

[dobwal]

lol don't be angry. We still need to wait till E3, content is still king. It's not worth being angry about until we see all the cards played out.

I still want Fantasia, need a good music game.

They better have a helluva E3. I see no point of timing the release of their kinectless sku to their e3 press conference unless they have something substantial.

I am pretty bummed that they would cut out kinect. Motivation and resources aren't going to the same for a peripheral versus a standard.

 

[blakjedi]

As pointed out before, SHAPE is not part of Kinect in any way, the Tensilica audio cores are (bkillian explained this several times) and they turn out very capable processors if freed up.

Gotta say though that had I knew this I'd buy a brand new razor for me with the price of Kinect2 and wouldn't buy the console at launch, but later.

from vgleaks:

"AVP (Audio Vector Processor)

The AVP supports vector float operations, and is designed primarily for MEC (multichannel echo cancellation) and other noise reduction for the next-generation Kinect audio input. It supports both speech recognition and chat/arbitrary audio input use. MEC and other noise reduction processing allow for a more intelligible stream of the player’s spoken audio data even from a far talk microphone that is typically positioned closer to the output speakers than to the player."

Maybe they are wrong i dont know... SHAPE means (Scalable Hardware Audio Processing Engine)

How is it not part of the audio block? LOL It IS the audio block.


Read more at: http://www.vgleaks.com/durango-sound-of-tomorrow/