Kinect-less XB1 fallout thread *spawn

[Laa-Yosh]

this boat looks just like the other boat, costs just as much as the other boat, except the other boat actually performs better.

I think you're putting way too much emphasis on this single issue, probably because of some personal disappointment.

Performance and image quality problems in multiplatform titles have not killed the PS3, and they won't kill the X1 either.
Exclusive games and services are also very important. Microsoft has a lot more money to spend and their 90 minute E3 show seems to be all about games, suggesting that they have a lot of releases coming up.

Sure, the silence from Sony may indicate confidence that they don't need to hype up anything... But the news about studio closures and reorganizations, about canceled titles and such are making it much more likely that they're not in a good position.

Neither consoles have a real nice system seller on the horizon so far. If MS is the first to come up with something truly nextgen - and not just graphics! - then it should be more then enough to compensate for the weaker hardware.

After all, Ryse has already demonstrated that capable developers can build some really outstanding titles on the X1 platform. 900p with an effective AA solution is perfectly good image quality, so it's "just" the gameplay and the content variety that's lacking, and it can be built with enough time and money.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

I think you're putting way too much emphasis on this single issue, probably because of some personal disappointment.

Performance and image quality problems in multiplatform titles have not killed the PS3, and they won't kill the X1 either.

That's because the PS3 actually was able to demonstrate its power in exclusive titles, the PS3 had absurdly positive press for the years prior and during its launch window. The reality that third party games frequently looked better on the 360 than the PS3 wasn't known at launch. Unlike here, with the PS3 people bought it ignoring their "lying eyes" because they were told the PS3 really had the power and it just needed to be tapped.

Here, the situation is obvious. Even if MS's memory architecture can make up for the actual memory deficiencies, it can't make up for the generational difference in GPU. The differences in quality of games from the One and PS4 are already well known to everybody. The One is the weaker console and that gap will only grow in the future. It won't shrink and the "real truth" won't be revealed over time, unlike last generation.

Exclusive games and services are also very important. Microsoft has a lot more money to spend and their 90 minute E3 show seems to be all about games, suggesting that they have a lot of releases coming up.

I think exclusive games are virtually meaningless. When was the last "console seller" exclusive? Where there was a demonstrable increase in sales because of the games release? And how do exclusives sell, over all, in terms of pushing software? Sure.. MS might have had a few larger exclusives last generation, but didn't Sony have more? Which pushed more sales? MS's two or three exclusive franchises or all of Sony's various ones?

Neither consoles have a real nice system seller on the horizon so far. If MS is the first to come up with something truly nextgen - and not just graphics! - then it should be more then enough to compensate for the weaker hardware.

So how are they going to help if they're not even on the horizon? And what is MS going to offer that is nextgen? Clearly, it won't be graphics because Sony has the edge there anyway. It won't be with Kinect interaction, because they've just killed that.

So if MS can come up with something clearly revolutionary that doesn't require strong graphics or a unique user interface, they'll be okay?

They've scrapped the entire vision, and thus, purpose of the console. Their time, effort, and resources would have been better spent just buying tflops and hoping something comes along later to put them to use.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

The differences in quality of games from the One and PS4 are already well known to everybody. The One is the weaker console and that gap will only grow in the future. It won't shrink and the "real truth" won't be revealed over time, unlike last generation.

Most of your post is just opinion, but the above is especially way beyond reason. I'm sorry but I just don't have the time to argue about such things.

 

[iroboto]

Here, the situation is obvious. Even if MS's memory architecture can make up for the actual memory deficiencies, it can't make up for the generational difference in GPU. The differences in quality of games from the One and PS4 are already well known to everybody. The One is the weaker console and that gap will only grow in the future. It won't shrink and the "real truth" won't be revealed over time, unlike last generation.

I think everyone sees the trajectory, but there has been too much smoke and mirrors and marketing to really know if the GPU is a generational difference behind. It's not easy to wade through bs; time will tell. We'll know more by the end of 2014 beginning of 2015 by that time DX12 will be out of NDA and real judgement will pass on the validity of the hardware choices made by MS.

As sebbbi has pointed out earlier, the further both consoles move away from older generation engines/architectures the more likely both will perform better.

If X1 was indeed designed specifically for DX12, I can't see any reason why it would perform better on native DX11.2 or DX10 engines over native DX12 engines. tldr; I can't see X1 performing poorer in the future than it could possibly be performing today.

 

[shredenvain]

Hey RancidLM. Im not trying to gang up on you and start crap.
There is no generational difference in the 2 gpus, Only Alu and Rops.
You are entitled to your opinion but we have had larger gaps in gpu capabilities in past console gens.
Technically the differences between the 360 and Ps3 gpu is greater than these 2. The 360's gpu literally was a generation ahead of the Ps3 and had more alu. The Ps3 did fine once sony made some adjustments just like it appears Ms is doing now. You seem to forget that power doesnt always win the console wars. As far as the 2 systems memory go they have similar amounts of ram and similar amounts of bandwidth. Yeah I know Esram too small bla bla bla. Bandwidth is Bandwidth. Now one difference that really does matter more than anything else is ease of development. The Ps4 will always have an easier arch to develop for and more raw alu. None of that means things wont get better for the Xbox one. Things got better for the Ps3 last gen.

 

[AzBat]

They're between a rock and a hard place, but for some people the value proposition of a kinect-less sku is much better, because they don't want kinect. Many of these gamers will never buy a PS4 anyway so the power difference isn't that big of a deal, they have too many friends on xbox and want to stay there.

I'm the latter. I will never buy a PS4. I can't tell the difference between 900p & 1080p or 30fps & 60fps. I'm staying with Xbox for 2 major reasons: my friends & the exclusives(Halo, Snap, Kinect).

Except there is no saving the boat.

Because this boat looks just like the other boat, costs just as much as the other boat, except the other boat actually performs better.

I don't believe it's as dire as you think, but I don't think it's all roses either. There's more to the value proposition than graphical performance. It's games, friends, services, etc.

I mean, let's get real. Even most of the people applauding this move are still acknowledging that the console has no legs at all at $399 and needs to be reduced another $50 at least.

I think MS are caught between a rock & hard place. On one hand they needed to make some non-game announcements before their totally-game-focused E3. On the other hand they don't want to reveal everything to their competitor before E3 either. Plus, usually price drops last generation were announced in the fall after E3 & before the holidays. I think it's a good move to drop to $400 as quickly as possible. I would have preferred they done it with Kinect included, but that's just me being selfish. So I can see them dropping Kinect to get price & peripheral parity with PS4 now, but I can also see them doing a legit price drop on the original SKU later this year to spur more demand. This time of year is usually slow anyway, doesn't make sense to do a real price drop now especially when they don't have any major tent pole games anyway. I think by the end of the year we will see a $350 non-Kinect, $450 with Kinect/game & a Kinect 2/game for $150. I think they would do well with that, but I don't think we'll see it announced at E3. Probably before Halo ships instead.

How many 360 owners paid for Gold? That's the upper limit of their potential customer base. Of those, how many don't have a PS3 (or already bought a PS4) and rely so heavily on the Gold Live experience that they are willing to pay an equal price for a sub-par product and a monthly subscription fee? Clearly, that's a significantly small portion of the original subset of total 360 owners.

MS might have some good data backing up their idea that of 80+ million 360 owners they still have a large percentage of owners still using their 360 & not buying a XB1. I fall into that category & so do you. If I had enough disposable income I would have a XB1 already & if I did I know you could afford easily if you wanted to. But the reason why you don't have one? Because I haven't got one myself. So I think MS reasons have some merit at least in our case. Considering that 10-12 million next-gen consoles have been sold so far I still think there is lots of potential that a healthy subset of 360 & PS3 owners that haven't made the jump to either system.

They've killed the One. Their only hope to avoid complete and total destruction is by undercutting the PS4 by at least $50 in 6 months.

This move isn't going to increase sales at all, not when there were bundles available just a few weeks ago at the same price point - and those included Kinect.

I don't think it will increase a lot of sales, but what I think it will do more is stop a lot current 360 owners from jumping ship to the other platform. They will wait for fall and/or lower price now that they know they can get a system without Kinect. Basically stopping their hemorrhaging for a little while until more games & services come out.

Tommy McClain

 

[Betanumerical]

Hey RancidLM. Im not trying to gang up on you and start crap.
There is no generational difference in the 2 gpus, Only Alu and Rops.
You are entitled to your opinion but we have had larger gaps in gpu capabilities in past console gens.
Technically the differences between the 360 and Ps3 gpu is greater than these 2. The 360's gpu literally was a generation ahead of the Ps3 and had more alu. The Ps3 did fine once sony made some adjustments just like it appears Ms is doing now. You seem to forget that power doesnt always win the console wars. As far as the 2 systems memory go they have similar amounts of ram and similar amounts of bandwidth. Yeah I know Esram too small bla bla bla. Bandwidth is Bandwidth. Now one difference that really does matter more than anything else is ease of development. The Ps4 will always have an easier arch to develop for and more raw alu. None of that means things wont get better for the Xbox one. Things got better for the Ps3 last gen.

There are differences between the two that extend further then just ALU and ROPs wether or not they count as a generational difference is another debate. The only way the PS3 managed to get such good perf was via the overpowered CPU, the XB1 doesn't have this luxury.

 

[shredenvain]

There are differences between the two that extend further then just ALU and ROPs wether or not they count as a generational difference is another debate. The only way the PS3 managed to get such good perf was via the overpowered CPU, the XB1 doesn't have this luxury.

I know the Ps4 has more ACEs but we could go back and forth tit for tat.
The Xbox One has Dmes for several functions as well as shape. See.
The main point about the Gpu is there isnt a generatonal difference.
They are both Sea Islands which is the same arch and they are even made by the same company. The bottom line is this is the closest 2 gpus have ever been in any 2 consoles.
Sure these things seem important to tech minded gamers but around 70% of console gamers have no clue what a compute unit, Rop or Ace is much less there value in a dollar amount.
It seems alot of people are blowing this way out of proportion. I dont really like the fact they are unbundling Kinect but damn some people are calling it the final nail in the coffin of a system that has sold 5 million consoles in 13 countries in less than 6 months.
It really is quite silly. Some are even implying Ms will withdrawl from console gaming.
They dont need to release a new system it isnt the WiiU. The biggest problem facing Ms is they need to launch world wide. There is another problem that they share with Sony.
NO GAMES. E3 will hopefully change the lack of games on both systems but what good is a reasonable priced next gen game console that doesnt have a decent library of good games.
The Xbox isnt doomed at least not yet. The 360 didnt really take off until Gears and Halo 3 came out. That took 2 years and we are 6 months in.

 

[Rangers]

damn some people are calling it the final nail in the coffin

Yup, hilarious.

"It's $100 cheaper now?? Doomed!"

It's going to sell more, a lot more, now, than before. That is all.

 

[(((interference)))]

Wow, so concludes their spectacular about-face!

It must be mind boggling for people in the Xbox organisation to watch how much the console and MS's strategy have changed in little over a year.

Though, really, this unbundling of Kinect seems rather shortsighted as they have just lost their major USP. Now they seem like a company without vision selling, merely, a weaker PS4 but without Sony's stable of excellent 1P developers and exclusives.

Why are people (especially core gamers) going to want to pay the same money for an XB1 when they can get a more powerful machine, (which is likely to have much better exclusives) from a company that hasn't courted controversy and gamer indignation at every turn.

If they really wanted to get ahead in the sales race, they should have reduced the price to $399 with Kinect, they are already profitable on the $499 SKU and MS's coffers are certainly able to take a loss for now to gain traction and momentum in the marketplace.

 

[Betanumerical]

I know the Ps4 has more ACEs but we could go back and forth tit for tat.
The Xbox One has Dmes for several functions as well as shape. See.
The main point about the Gpu is there isnt a generatonal difference.
They are both Sea Islands which is the same arch and they are even made by the same company. The bottom line is this is the closest 2 gpus have ever been in any 2 consoles.
Sure these things seem important to tech minded gamers but around 70% of console gamers have no clue what a compute unit, Rop or Ace is much less there value in a dollar amount.
It seems alot of people are blowing this way out of proportion. I dont really like the fact they are unbundling Kinect but damn some people are calling it the final nail in the coffin of a system that has sold 5 million consoles in 13 countries in less than 6 months.
It really is quite silly. Some are even implying Ms will withdrawl from console gaming.
They dont need to release a new system it isnt the WiiU. The biggest problem facing Ms is they need to launch world wide. There is another problem that they share with Sony.
NO GAMES. E3 will hopefully change the lack of games on both systems but what good is a reasonable priced next gen game console that doesnt have a decent library of good games.
The Xbox isnt doomed at least not yet. The 360 didnt really take off until Gears and Halo 3 came out. That took 2 years and we are 6 months in.

The changes that I was thinking of have to do with the cache which seems like a generational change to me wether or not that nessicitates a seperate gen is another story

 

[Cyan]

Here, the situation is obvious. Even if MS's memory architecture can make up for the actual memory deficiencies, it can't make up for the generational difference in GPU. The differences in quality of games from the One and PS4 are already well known to everybody. The One is the weaker console and that gap will only grow in the future.

Well, actually, it should be the other way around, the difference should decrease as time goes on, as the Xbox One has a more complex architecture.

Also they somehow reserved resources for Kinect and MS have said that they are going to free them up now.

In regards to the entire vision of the console, bkilian :smile2: left because of that.

It was way too elitist (think of Origin from EA and the poor Titanfall sales on PC).

In my opinion, you would be happy with it as it was, not saying otherwise, but I presume you'd be unhappy after a while seeing people refused to buy the console, almost everyone mocking a choice you made and seeing that it didn't get support 'cos of the lack of sales.

DRM, Internet on all the time.. I've been a week without Internet and I was the happier person ever those days. Still I played the Xbox One.

 

[liquidboy]

Yup, hilarious.

"It's $100 cheaper now?? Doomed!"

It's going to sell more, a lot more, now, than before. That is all.

Very smart reduction in $$$ as MS nears its launch into 26 more markets (up from 13 at launch last year)...

It may come at the cost of Kinect2 BUT hey this is business and from what i've been told this is marketing 101...

i.e.

Launch 1 - build your base with the bigger bundle, take the hit with that 5 million userbase to show off the full experience which includes Kinect with the "early adopters" ..

Launch 2 - go for the big sales with a "segmentation" approach, cheaper bundles needed, possible skews for specific demographics ..


Regardless ... more markets ... cheaper bundle ... a nice list of games ... and with 5+million sales already under your belt!...

Nice Position MS is in...

 

[Rangers]

Wow, so concludes their spectacular about-face!

It must be mind boggling for people in the Xbox organisation to watch how much the console and MS's strategy have changed in little over a year.

Though, really, this unbundling of Kinect seems rather shortsighted as they have just lost their major USP. Now they seem like a company without vision selling, merely, a weaker PS4 but without Sony's stable of excellent 1P developers and exclusives.

Why are people (especially core gamers) going to want to pay the same money for an XB1 when they can get a more powerful machine, (which is likely to have much better exclusives) from a company that hasn't courted controversy and gamer indignation at every turn.

If they really wanted to get ahead in the sales race, they should have reduced the price to $399 with Kinect, they are already profitable on the $499 SKU and MS's coffers are certainly able to take a loss for now to gain traction and momentum in the marketplace.

I once saw a sarcastic April fools tweet from a Xbox supporter, "I've switched to PS4. I decided I just couldn't live without slightly better graphics any longer".

Point is, depending, one could argue any number of factors are a bigger deal (there's truth on both sides of this argument imo). As far as Sony's "excellent stable" (quoted because Sony's IP doesn't appeal to me), little has been seen of it this gen if anything MS has a solid edge there so far, and Sony's studios seem to be in turmoil, such I even wonder sometimes if they are having financial issues.

$399 with Kinect would have cost MS a lot of money, there's no way around that. They really dont seem to like losing money on Xbox nowdays, so it wasn't an option.

I dont think they're highly profitable on $499/kinect X1. In fact I think there's been some hints in their financial statements that it's probably a break even or slight money loser.


I have a feeling Kinect 2.0 is quite expensive. And it's one of those pesky things like the Wuublet that just cant ever go down in cost too much, as it's lost of physical stuff. Those are the absolute worst for a console.

It all boils back to what I've said all along, Xbox's best hope, besides leveraging what I feel are MS's strengths in OS/Online, is to be the "good enough" console that costs substantially less because of DDR3. That is the strength of the design, traded off with the weakness of less brute force. There's no way you ever get to exploiting that strength with Kinect in the picture. Decoupling Kinect is absolutely necessary in the long term success of X1 imo.


This really should all be in business discussion but since everybody is doing it here I'm replying here.

 

[Cyan]

I'm the latter. I will never buy a PS4. I can't tell the difference between 900p & 1080p or 30fps & 60fps. I'm staying with Xbox for 2 major reasons: my friends & the exclusives(Halo, Snap, Kinect).



I don't believe it's as dire as you think, but I don't think it's all roses either. There's more to the value proposition than graphical performance. It's games, friends, services, etc.



I think MS are caught between a rock & hard place. On one hand they needed to make some non-game announcements before their totally-game-focused E3. On the other hand they don't want to reveal everything to their competitor before E3 either. Plus, usually price drops last generation were announced in the fall after E3 & before the holidays. I think it's a good move to drop to $400 as quickly as possible. I would have preferred they done it with Kinect included, but that's just me being selfish. So I can see them dropping Kinect to get price & peripheral parity with PS4 now, but I can also see them doing a legit price drop on the original SKU later this year to spur more demand. This time of year is usually slow anyway, doesn't make sense to do a real price drop now especially when they don't have any major tent pole games anyway. I think by the end of the year we will see a $350 non-Kinect, $450 with Kinect/game & a Kinect 2/game for $150. I think they would do well with that, but I don't think we'll see it announced at E3. Probably before Halo ships instead.



MS might have some good data backing up their idea that of 80+ million 360 owners they still have a large percentage of owners still using their 360 & not buying a XB1. I fall into that category & so do you. If I had enough disposable income I would have a XB1 already & if I did I know you could afford easily if you wanted to. But the reason why you don't have one? Because I haven't got one myself. So I think MS reasons have some merit at least in our case. Considering that 10-12 million next-gen consoles have been sold so far I still think there is lots of potential that a healthy subset of 360 & PS3 owners that haven't made the jump to either system.



I don't think it will increase a lot of sales, but what I think it will do more is stop a lot current 360 owners from jumping ship to the other platform. They will wait for fall and/or lower price now that they know they can get a system without Kinect. Basically stopping their hemorrhaging for a little while until more games & services come out.

Tommy McClain

Excellent read Tommy.

I think it will increase sales. Now the console is actually interesting for many people, reading their reactions.

Many people applaud the change of direction the division has been taking ever since Phil Spencer is commanding the ship.

Sales figures, compared to the competition weren't good, so now (and not later) with Phil as head of the Xbox, it was time to reformulate the philosophy of the product. There is nothing wrong with that. :smile2:

Well that's it. Make a fresh start, let bygones be bygones.

After seeing people's reaction -which is positive overall = more sales- I think I got it wrong quite a few times this generation, which hurts, and gotta admit that what Rangers, for instance, said and defended all this time, was right.

Not that I was totally wrong, but for all the money, R&D that went into Kinect, the amount of money MS would need to bring AAA games for Kinect to make it worthwhile..., without it paying off...

If Kinect made the Xbox One sell like hotcakes, every bit of money spent on it would be great! That would mean lots of Kinect games, Kinect mandatory, and so on.

But look at the sales of Kinect Sports... the little amount of attention Kinect got, etc etc etc.

Dunno what to do, I like the console a lot but not the marginalisation of Kinect, PS4 and WiiU aren't my cup of tea, too standard, and XB1 is now more or less quite similar.

I will keep playing/buying games on the Xbox One, although I expect leaning towards PC gaming a bit more than ever now.

 

[blakjedi]

Wow, so concludes their spectacular about-face!

It must be mind boggling for people in the Xbox organisation to watch how much the console and MS's strategy have changed in little over a year.

Though, really, this unbundling of Kinect seems rather shortsighted as they have just lost their major USP. Now they seem like a company without vision selling, merely, a weaker PS4 but without Sony's stable of excellent 1P developers and exclusives.

Why are people (especially core gamers) going to want to pay the same money for an XB1 when they can get a more powerful machine, (which is likely to have much better exclusives) from a company that hasn't courted controversy and gamer indignation at every turn.

If they really wanted to get ahead in the sales race, they should have reduced the price to $399 with Kinect, they are already profitable on the $499 SKU and MS's coffers are certainly able to take a loss for now to gain traction and momentum in the marketplace.

I totally agree. The Xbox one without Kinect isn't worth $399. With the Kinect yeah, without it nah... eso the x1 now should be priced closer to 325.

 

[Cyan]

I once saw a sarcastic April fools tweet from a Xbox supporter, "I've switched to PS4. I decided I just couldn't live without slightly better graphics any longer".

Point is, depending, one could argue any number of factors are a bigger deal (there's truth on both sides of this argument imo). As far as Sony's "excellent stable" (quoted because Sony's IP doesn't appeal to me), little has been seen of it this gen if anything MS has a solid edge there so far, and Sony's studios seem to be in turmoil, such I even wonder sometimes if they are having financial issues.

$399 with Kinect would have cost MS a lot of money, there's no way around that. They really dont seem to like losing money on Xbox nowdays, so it wasn't an option.

I dont think they're highly profitable on $499/kinect X1. In fact I think there's been some hints in their financial statements that it's probably a break even or slight money loser.


I have a feeling Kinect 2.0 is quite expensive. And it's one of those pesky things like the Wuublet that just cant ever go down in cost too much, as it's lost of physical stuff. Those are the absolute worst for a console.

It all boils back to what I've said all along, Xbox's best hope, besides leveraging what I feel are MS's strengths in OS/Online, is to be the "good enough" console that costs substantially less because of DDR3. That is the strength of the design, traded off with the weakness of less brute force. There's no way you ever get to exploiting that strength with Kinect in the picture. Decoupling Kinect is absolutely necessary in the long term success of X1 imo.


This really should all be in business discussion but since everybody is doing it here I'm replying here.

I think it all had to do with the fact that Kinect on the X360 did extremely well, and revitalised the sales of the X360. PS3 was getting stronger and stronger by the day, even selling more, and Kinect helped the X360 to keep up with the competition, which was starting to release excellent 1st party games. :smile2:

If you think about it, what were MS going to do? They started to support Kinect more, getting caught between two currents of water.

The bulk flow of water in the X360 was the core to begin with, but it wanted to be casual friendly too.

It seemed so promising, so interesting... And for the youngest company in the business trying new things -based on formulas that competition somewhat had used before- is kinda plausible.

This reminds me of the launch of Rock Band. EA were so happy, smiles here and there, then a couple of years afterwards music games were dead.

Wii initiated all of this with its apparent success. Sony and MS followed, only that Xbox got caught between two philosophies.

From personal experience, this never ever works IRL!!

I've been there, done that, even became a vegetarian for a week (among other things), but it gets to a point your true colours show and you can't disown yourself no matter what. :smile2:

It's very dangerous, and if MS weren't as healthy as they are, focusing resources on core experiences and Kinect experiences (more expenses, extra resources/studios for another product, like two consoles in one) would cripple the company's economy quite seriously.

Wii did well in this case 'cos it was designed clearly, it had a focused single philosophy in mind. You either liked that or you didn't.

I think Xbox One was caught in the middle of a transition, with delusive high sales of the original Kinect, and power being important, --two contradicting philosophies- they decided to go with a capable console meant for casuals too, and it seems that you can't please everybody.

 

[Brad Grenz]

I've been saying for a while it needs to be $299 without Kinect to meaningfully alter the current sale trajectory. Cutting to $399 without Kinect just tells me MS will not lose money in an effort to save the Xbox One.

 

[AzBat]

Excellent read Tommy.

I think it will increase sales. Now the console is actually interesting for many people, reading their reactions.

Many people applaud the change of direction the division has been taking ever since Phil Spencer is commanding the ship.

Sales figures, compared to the competition weren't good, so now (and not later) with Phil as head of the Xbox, it was time to reformulate the philosophy of the product. There is nothing wrong with that. :smile2:

Well that's it. Make a fresh start, let bygones be bygones.

After seeing people's reaction -which is positive overall = more sales- I think I got it wrong quite a few times this generation, which hurts, and gotta admit that what Rangers, for instance, said and defended all this time, was right.

Not that I was totally wrong, but for all the money, R&D that went into Kinect, the amount of money MS would need to bring AAA games for Kinect to make it worthwhile..., without it paying off...

If Kinect made the Xbox One sell like hotcakes, every bit of money spent on it would be great! That would mean lots of Kinect games, Kinect mandatory, and so on.

But look at the sales of Kinect Sports... the little amount of attention Kinect got, etc etc etc.

Dunno what to do, I like the console a lot but not the marginalisation of Kinect, PS4 and WiiU aren't my cup of tea, too standard, and XB1 is now more or less quite similar.

I will keep playing/buying games on the Xbox One, although I expect leaning towards PC gaming a bit more than ever now.

Thanks. PC is not an option for me. I loathe Windows on my home PC(hate virus/spyware software & I don't want to game on a desktop or laptop but rather my TV) so I run Linux exclusively. I'm also not happy with the marginalization of Kinect either. But I agree Phil was a great choice to head their comeback. I just hope he's able to bring to fruition part of their original plan with digital game sharing. I think that's something that could differentiate between them & PS4(provided they don't do it themselves). I also don't agree that just because a lot of people are happy that Kinect is no longer required means lots of sales either. I think a lot of the vocal detractors of the inclusion of Kinect and/or the $500 price have probably already made their purchase decisions. I think it will take another $50 price drop to $350 before you start seeing strides made in sales. At $400 it will just limp along, the Titanfall bundle at $450 is proof of that.

Tommy McClain

 

[Cyan]

Very smart reduction in $$$ as MS nears its launch into 26 more markets (up from 13 at launch last year)...

It may come at the cost of Kinect2 BUT hey this is business and from what i've been told this is marketing 101...

i.e.

Launch 1 - build your base with the bigger bundle, take the hit with that 5 million userbase to show off the full experience which includes Kinect with the "early adopters" ..

Launch 2 - go for the big sales with a "segmentation" approach, cheaper bundles needed, possible skews for specific demographics ..


Regardless ... more markets ... cheaper bundle ... a nice list of games ... and with 5+million sales already under your belt!...

Nice Position MS is in...

I'd just say a better position. Another take is that this is the confirmation that non consistent, non solid experimentation is over.

Goodbye Wii, goodbye WiiU, goodbye Kinect. Now things are like they were, I think. It was nice while it lasted.