The hardware in Kinect 2.0 looks to be amazing where is the software to show it off?

Yeah it was weird. Microsoft is lush with money, they can keep paying devs to make kinect games.

Double fine with their kinect games are awesome example.

Those games are fun to be played with the whole family. Easy to pick up.

Their games is like... Being possessed by Nintendo spirit or something.

Then we also have huge turd like steel battalion that tries to do too much, exceeding the kinect capability.

Then xbox one came and... Where's the awesome fun family kinect games?

Seriously, every time little cousins come to my home, I put kinect party. Bam! Family time.

For more mature family members, kinect sports (the old one), is easy to pick up and ridiculously fun.

When female comes, just Dance and dance central (the old one) also never fails to entertain.

They always complain about the old musics though.. Duh! It's xbox 360 game. Surely it have old musics.
 
Yeah it was weird. Microsoft is lush with money, they can keep paying devs to make kinect games.
It's not weird. Companies lush with money don't stay lush with money if they spend money on projects that don't provide a return on that investment.

Microsoft has shareholders. Shareholders don't give a fuck about fanboy wetdreams about more Xbox being sold than PlayStation. Shareholders care about profits, losses, margins and growth.
 
It's not weird. Companies lush with money don't stay lush with money if they spend money on projects that don't provide a return on that investment.

Microsoft has shareholders. Shareholders don't give a fuck about fanboy wetdreams about more Xbox being sold than PlayStation. Shareholders care about profits, losses, margins and growth.

Sadly if I were to ctrl+replace "projects or Kinect" in your post, and replace it with "first party exclusive games", it's exactly why people love Sony and hate MS. I'm not sure if you see the parallel here, they tried and gave it a decent shot and it died.

When Sony tries and it fails their heralded as heroes, looking to round out a portfolio. Gamers devices. Etc.

For that reason I bought into Xbox. I was buying into a vision that this device would be more than just games. It turns out the discussion only focused on games and nothing else ever turned out with it.

I've no issue with that statement. But there are certain realities in how the companies receive harsh criticism. In such the blows towards MS are much tougher pill to swallow then the ones Sony had to swallow.



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That's why I don't feel comfortable with Kojima going to sony...

It will take ridiculous amount of time to release if Kojima has not learned from his past projects with too big scope and details. But will it be a good Kojima game without those huge scope and details?

Ah dilemma.

On the other hand, since the boss of xbox has changed to the current dude (forgot his name)..

They also seems fine with pouring money to games that took ages to release. They also fine with buying exclusivity by funding projects from third parties.

I wish this dude is the boss of xbox since the launch of xbox one...
 
Of course, it also ties nicely in with Netflix parties and 1v100. Two other offerings that made the Xbox unique that widely loved and provided "next gen" interactive entertainment experiences and all tossed in the trash.

It makes me wonder how exactly the "app" or "portal" functionality of the XB1 works. Because you don't launch any Fitness games directly, you go through the Fitness app. There are other games that also have apps like Halo, that you don't access directly. I wonder if there's some sort of additional cost to maintaining that app functionality and if any game that isn't launched directly is also more susceptible to being removed?

I guess it could have nothing to do with expense in maintaining the app, but I'm hard pressed to believe there's licensing costs MS is paying for software that the users actually purchased.
 
Sadly if I were to ctrl+replace "projects or Kinect" in your post, and replace it with "first party exclusive games", it's exactly why people love Sony and hate MS. I'm not sure if you see the parallel here, they tried and gave it a decent shot and it died.

I'm not going to pretend to understand the economics of first party exclusives but I understand the basic principle that appealing games that can only be played on one system will increase the appeal of that system. There's no evidence to indicate how much difference first party exclusives impact the console purchase decision because there's no way to measure this.

But I'd say the obvious difference between first party exclusive games and Kinnect is that nobody is forced to buy first party games but Xbox One owners were forced to buy Kinnect because you couldn't buy an Xbox One without one. Even when developers could count on every Xbox One owner having Kinnect so they could build games around it, without worrying about missing a portion of the Xbox One market without it (like 360 Kinnect, PS2/PS3 EyeToy, PS Move, PS4 Camera) nobody was producing great Kinnect games. Could it just be that Kinnect was great technology that just didn't have tangible applications for games? Creating great games is difficult enough without constraining developers to using a bespoke suite of camera/motion technologies.

We've had cameras attached to consoles since PS2 and we've seen very few (any?) good games. It's not like developers lack imagination and Sony have shown themselves willing to fund any fucking crazy idea for a game, they've famous for it.
 
Figured this was the best place to put this, MS has closed the Xbox Fitness store. You can no longer make purchases. If you have purchased any games from the Xbox Fitness store, you have a year to use them before the entire thing is scuttled.

https://microsoftstudios.com/news/2016/06/27/xbox-fitness-sunset-announcement/

I don't really see the logic here, there must be on-going costs associated with maintaining the Xbox Fitness portal that I'm not recognizing. I can understand that various licensing deals could be expiring, but I don't see how legally purchases can be treated differently than workout DVDs. (ie, people who bought PX90 on DVD can still use it - on the XB1, only for one more year.)

On the bright side, it saved my the $399 for the XB1S and $50 for another kinect and $179 for a MS Band. So good news all around, I guess.

It also motivated me to look up PS4 fitness options, which to my surprise, there are none. The fitness games on the PS2 were on of my girlfriend at the time most favorite things.
And this is exactly what I fear with forced digital sales
 
And this is exactly what I fear with forced digital sales

Another reason why shuttering the store and removing the ability for the users to access the games they've already purchased makes little sense. It runs directly counter to their goal of moving everybody to digital and having a shared library over many devices.

One would think they'd be a bit more aware of how bad of a signal this sends. I won't be making any more digital purchases this generation because I am no longer confident that I want to remain in the MS ecosystem next generation.
 
Digital purchase is like that since ages ago right?

At least in xbox it is totally region free and still work even after you got banned.

In PS it is region locked and will be gone if you got banned.
 
Another reason why shuttering the store and removing the ability for the users to access the games they've already purchased makes little sense. It runs directly counter to their goal of moving everybody to digital and having a shared library over many devices.
One important objective of digital-only is often planned obsolescence.
1. Servers are shut down if there's too few paying customers versus customers only using their purchases.
2. Buying something, and keeping it forever, is in the way of similar paying services, present or future.
3. A warranty is an interesting legal concept for a digital purchase, when there is none implied or expressed.

Some suits didn't think this through and they'll have to backtrack. If it's a case of #1, they are validating the noDRM crowd was 100% correct and the most simple DRM services are eventually shut down. If this is a #2 they can't announce any new fitness product without journalists exposing the link.
 
Updated on 7/5/2016 by Jennifer Paige to add:

We wanted to take a moment to update you all on how affected users will be credited for the changes listed above:

  • Every user that purchased Xbox Fitness content will be eligible to receive a credit in his or her Microsoft account for the value of the content purchased. Credits can be used to make purchases in the Xbox and Windows Stores.
  • Credits will be deposited automatically into the accounts of Xbox Fitness users. An Xbox System Message will be sent at the time of deposit, viewable on Xbox One, Xbox.com or the Xbox on Windows application.
  • Xbox Fitness users will receive their credit within 90 days and the credit will be available for use for one year from the day of deposit.
  • The majority of Xbox Fitness users will receive the account credit directly in their Microsoft account. A small number of users, who including those who are not able to receive a deposit, will receive an Xbox system message with a code or some other form of equivalent value.
  • As announced, beginning June 27, 2016 users will no longer be able to purchase programs and/or workouts. Xbox Fitness users who purchased workouts in the past will be able to play them until June 10, 2017

 
Well, it's a shame - and a rather silly one at that - for purchased content to become inaccessible, but at least they're automatically refunding everyone.
 
Some suits didn't think this through and they'll have to backtrack. If it's a case of #1, they are validating the noDRM crowd was 100% correct and the most simple DRM services are eventually shut down.

...it is, obviously, case #1.
And all XB1 screamers were totally right.
hehe, i was waiting this day, to be honest... the fact they offer a reimbursement means nothing. You LOSE the rights to use what you did purchase at THEIR discretion, no matter what. And this proves it.
 
Cannot help but think this is more than digital DRM fail vs disk, this seem more like whatever license they had for this content has been revoked or expired and contractually they have to remove content. I wonder if the lack of new Kinect owners has been the cause and the agreed business venture is being closed.

If the contract is the reason then the owners would probably never have agreed to use disk delivery or would have put online DRM ontop anyhow.

There have been license lapse before for digital content such as outrun and I believe owners can still play and also redownload from the store. This is not the normal operating procedure for simply delisting digital content and as such you cannot assume it would have affected disk users any differently.
 
A good portion of the XBox Fitness content was being provided by Beachbody. They have their own Streaming Service for this content. It wasn't released until July 2015. They, Beachbody, may have opted to not renew the agreement with MS or wanted to renegotiate for higher rates.

The service is BeachBody On Demand and is $3 a week. It's available on Apple, Roku, FireTV, and Chromecast devices.
 
you cannot assume it would have affected disk users any differently.
So you're saying there's a chance Microsoft would send trained agents to infiltrate people's houses and destroy their game disks?
 
So you're saying there's a chance Microsoft would send trained agents to infiltrate people's houses and destroy their game disks?

No but if the license was expired and they are obliged to activly stop users consuming it (not just stop new sales) they can block a disk just as they did on the 360.

Just because you have a disk does not mean the console will play it.

This does not seem like normal end life so who knows what is the cause but a disk is not impervious to license removal.
 
No but if the license was expired and they are obliged to activly stop users consuming it (not just stop new sales) they can block a disk just as they did on the 360.
What retail disks were blocked on the 360 and how is that even remotely legal?
 
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