Better without Kinect

May 14th, 2014, 21:56 Posted By: wraggster

It must have hurt to do it, but Microsoft's decision to strip Kinect out of Xbox One and lower the price of the console feels like the right one overall. The problems it solves were simply too important to get hung up on the problems it creates.This is pretty much the same decision Sony executives made about the PlayStation Camera behind closed doors early last year, allowing them to hit a much lower price than Microsoft at the PlayStation 4 launch. That decision upset a few developers and publishers who had been told they could plan around the camera's inclusion with confidence, but those tensions have been smoothed over by the console's success.Xbox One has sold in decent numbers as well, but comparing the figures to Xbox 360 was never going to impress anyone while PS4 was busy setting new records. Microsoft waited to see whether Titanfall would bridge the gap and allow it to maintain a higher price, but when that didn't happen and Kinect Sports Rivals flopped, the logic of cutting the price and ditching Kinect to pay for it must have been too compelling to ignore.It's another embarrassing U-turn, then, but Microsoft gets some cover with investors at least by pointing to new management. CEO Satya Nadella and Head of Xbox Phil Spencer are both recently appointed or promoted, and they are setting a new strategy, which is the sort of thing financial markets understand. It will be harder to look the console's early adopters in the eye, but then most of them were Kinect's loudest detractors, so they may even view the situation as an improvement.Removing Kinect from every Xbox One sold will also discourage Kinect game developers, of course, but as the old joke goes, I'm sure both of them will get over it. The former Xbox 360 peripheral was once a record-setting sales success, but only once, and a lack of compelling new gameplay ideas has been its main problem for the last three years.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/20...without-kinect

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