Well, this one’s a bit of a surprise. Microsoft, who have been extremely eager to push Kinect as part of the Xbox One package, have finally decided to take the camera and motion sensor combo out of the equation, revealing a cheaper price for the system.
They’re cutting the price to $399, or £349 in the UK, but that’s just the RRP so further cuts could come from retailers themselves. The system without Kinect will be available from June 9th, the same day as Microsoft’s E3 press conference.
Previously, Microsoft have stated that the Kinect was mandatory, before allowing it to be unplugged, and then suggested that it’s required for the share features it can bring via voice. They’ve done a lot of backtracking before, but this is huge. In fact, Peter said in his blog about E3, published just an hour ago ” I think dropping Kinect would not only confuse their message and strategy, it would be incredibly difficult to implement because of how integral it is to their system.”
It seems as though Microsoft aren’t thinking the same, and really just want to get their system to as many people as possible, though they still say that “Kinect remains an important part of our vision” and will offer a standalone Kinect unit for people who wish to buy the sensor further down the line.
Secondly, they’ve also removed the Xbox Live Gold requirements for entertainment apps – meaning you can access Netflix, Hulu, and any other video service without having to pay two subscriptions. Also, Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Halo: Spartan Assault will come free with your Gold subscription, much like PlayStation Plus.
gamerbuff
More Xbox one train wreck please. Its always great to see Microsoft’s arrogance getting crushed. Not even Max Clifford could spin his way out this one
MaD dOctoR 79
to be fair he has other stuff on his mind…
GTOWN
What will I do for my xbox trolling YouTube videos now?
lambchop
This last year has been great! MS and xbone have supplied so much free entertainment…..
DividSmythe
Wow I’ve lost £100 on this then. Never mind my Kinnect will stay in its usual place behind the TV.
Sad Panda
Surprised no one has picked up on this, but in effect, Microsoft have just increased the prices.
I can buy an xbone right now with Kinect and a £50 game for £387 on Amazon right now. Sub £300 and I might think about it, but not without an amazing E3 line up to make it worthwhile.
TSBonyman
I think it’s probably a fairly safe bet that Microsoft have pulled out all the stops for E3 this year considering how things have been going so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what both have to offer and i don’t think either will disappoint, but i’ll stick with PS4 for now and possibly pick up an xb1-slim later on when there is a good selection of exclusives that i’m interested in.
boeboe
Yeah good catch. Screwing over their old customers and their new ones too, nice job.
manky_
I expect MS are on the full offensive now, and will chuck money at 3rd parties like there’s no tomorrow, in an attempt to get away from this car crash of a launch. Which will go down great with some and alienate others further.
gamerbuff
Watch dogs is already scaled back on ps4 at the request of Microsoft.
Microsoft dollars at work
cc_star
Microsoft part with their own money to a company they don’t have a marketing arrangement with, for a title that the rival does have a business arrangement with to scale it back?
Do you have any spare tinfoil hats?
Starman
Brilliant!
gamerbuff
If you want us to publish this on Xbox one, then that platform parity contract you signed is still valid…. Your gonna need to scale it back.
Word on the street is that the games delay was this legal spat. Microsoft’s might won in the end.
Andrewww
I’m actually surprised how quickly MS is acting now. Maybe that’s due to new people being in control. And it’s definitely a good change of strategy.
They took the wrong decision on this one, thought they could sell loads of unwanted hardware to customers and profit. Maybe they were too sure of their market position after last gen. I thought it was quite obvious that Kinect as well as Move were just trying to rip off Nintendo’s ideas in the wrong market. It worked for the casual crowd, but most core gamers never were able to name a single motion-controlled game which was more than a party joke.
Foxhound_Solid
Haha. Looks like those folk over the way on the green team are at their panic stations.
Very odd considering they’ve built their entire console as a subject around kinect. Now they’re selling it without it? Not good at all.
Glad I’m a Playstationist. Always have been and always will be. It never fails to amaze me how Microsoft give what looks to be zero f***s about their consumers.
Risky business for them especially after the lighting fast 180 and price cut? This all before they’ve even launched globally. Madness. Absolute madness!
Time for some THRILLZONE :-))
Amphlett
Can anyone help me out here? I’m thinking back along the last 12 months of this fiasco and trying to remember all of the hilarious PR fails…
Deal with it! – The ill fated always connected failure
TV, TV, TV – The misguided E3 presentation telling gamers how they could watch TV through their Xbox Ones on their TVs.
Sports, sport, sports – Pretty much hand-in-hand with the TV debacle was the USA-centric focus on baseball and American footbal programs being streamed through the XboxOne.
Kinect is always listening – Perhaps it was just truly awful luck, but the idea that a camera and microphone would be permanently connected and listening being announced at the same time as the USA government snooping details emerging was real bad timing.
Kinect activated by adverts – I remember the videos of XBox Ones would spark up various apps when “XBox ” was uttered in TV commercials. I was surprised that Sony didn’t release an advert with the strap line “XBox search PS4 prices”.
PS4 can swap their HDD? – Erm, erm, XBox guys didn’t have any reply.
Kinect can be unplugged – What? I thought it had to be connect ALL the time.
Multi-platform 1080p – Looks like the XBox One is struggling to keep up here.
Kinect is dropped from XBox One – Now this latest tale.
Anyone recall any other nightmares they’ve had in the last 12 months?
a inferior race
Sony e3 keynote when the journos chanted sony’s name
JesseDeya
So so many more, off the top of my head and in no particular order:
– “We’re over delivering on value”
– “We have a device for people that aren’t connected to the internet, it’s called the Xbox 360”
– “Have you SEEN Titanfall??” – Turns out to be 792p. Doesn’t sell nearly as well as MS hope.
– “Highest selling console this month!!!!*” – *assuming you only look at a specific 12 day date range
– “There is no way the Xbox One is giving up 30% performance delta to PS4. Our engineers invented Direct X!” – gives up 30-50% performance delta
– No headset in XBO box, then added at last minute. No headphone adapter included. Sold later for extra $$.
– Day 1 update required for box to function.
– Missing services at launch blamed on customers – because if we didn’t complain about draconian (I mean ‘forward thinking’) DRM then they wouldn’t have had to re-engineer the box before launch.
– Broken party chat for 5 months.
– Forza 5 heavily advertised as being 1080p. Once performance deficit becomes public, MS stop talking about 1080p.
– You know how we said we would be launching globally? We actually mean only 9 countries. Sorry, the rest of you are tier 2, or 3, or 4, or not mentioned.
– You know how we said Kinect was awesome? It might not recognise your variant of English at launch. Sorry.
– You know how we said Input One, One device, etc. Well if you’re in that Europe place and use 50Hz TVs you’re shit gonna be screwed. Sorry, we’ll fix it eventually.
– Oh, you have more than two devices for Kinect to control? Macros? Never heard of them.
– Forza 5 only has 200 cars and 14 tracks because we wanted them to all be super duper awesome. Honest. Nothing to do with DLC or whatnot – *Turn 10 goes on to pimp micro transactions, season passes and car/tracks packs.
– Your 360 wheels? Nah, they won’t work because we’ve totally made XIB soooo much better. Also, money is nice.
Eldaveo
Certainly very annoying for early adopters such as myself who didn’t want the Kinect (and certainly didn’t want to pay £429.99 for a console) but I can’t blame Phil Spencer for going down this route. Last year the likes of Don Mattrick (*shudders*) were at the helm and clearly wanted the X1 to be an entertainment system.
The high price, coupled with poor PR essentially doomed this idea from the start and now Phil Spencer (a guy who clearly wants the X1 to be an actual games console) has had to make some rather big changes to try and catch up with the PS4.
A price cut was essential and the Kinect was the first logical thing to go. Between the reduced the price tag, the PS Plus-like “Games with Gold” system and the removal of paywall restrictions on Netflix, etc, he’s already pushing the X1 in the right direction.
Will it ever catch up with the PS4? Doubtful in the early going but, now the two consoles are essentially identical, the exclusive games will do the talking and its anyone’s guess. As much as people claim “I won’t buy from Microsoft ever again”, etc, etc, all of this will be forgotten soon in the same way the PSN hack last gen was.