Ditto.

Replace Xbox with PS3, Kinect with Move, and MS with Sony and you have the same situation. Don't be ignorant and just think that only 360 fanboys complain about "retarded" articles.

Preorders for what? Kinect as a standalone, or huge amounts of bundles? Standalone pre orders are for people who ALREADY own a 360. Indeed, its not the bundles being reported that top the charts in the uk, its the standalone kinect.....

I have considered this for sometime now. Kinect may sell itself to existing 360 owners but i think its a hard sell with the cost of the bundle being 250 pounds. Unfortunately microsoft are hoping it WILL boost 360 hardware sales to casual consumers WITHOUT a 360. That means bundles.

People can pre-order things until they turn blue in the face, I just don't see it as a true representation of actual sales, because a lot of things can change in the timespan of now and when then the product is actually released. I for one as a consumer have pre-ordered products and, later on return and put it on something else or even outright canceled it altogether many times because I have experienced money problems. There are many cases off people not claiming their pre-orders. Besides it wouldn't surprise me in the least bit to find out that microsoft has found a was to manipulate the pre-order counts at select retailer be it by phantom customers or thim themselves placing the pre-orders internally. One thing I've learned about microsoft in my 40 years is they are willing to do anything to win! That is why they're documented cases of the supreme courts have had to keep them on a short lease.

I don't think they need to rebrand themselves, just make the Kinect brand known to people. With the Macys events, etc. They seem to be positioning themselves in places Wii buyers will see it.

Considering they current sale of $90 at Toys R Us, I already jumped on it, even though I previously said I was going to wait.

Let those Guys say what they want b/c it will not matter .Sony Lost this Gen long time ago.Kinect will sale like HotCakes come this Nov.Microsoft has the Hardcore wraped up and Kinect will do the Rest.With Halo on its way and Kinect its a Done Deal for Sony

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".