I think Kinect is the one truly awesome thing about XB1. It's impressive as all hell, but yes they did stiff early adopters. How many times was the word 'impossible' thrown around when people asked for Kinectless SKU. It was supposedly such an integrated thing that it couldn't even be considered. Not everyone would have waited. They still got something for their money, but some of them didn't want that thing and trusted MS it would be central to their console at some ...
Feel sorry for XBox fans and their 'no company listens to its fans' bs. Must suck to live in your cynical world. You must obviously have never bought a game off Steam or shopped at Amazon, or gotten an Android update. Amazon, Valve, and yes Sony, aren't absolute angels, but making customers happy is at least part of their decision making process, even if they're doing it because it's profitable in the long run to have the public not hate you.
At MS bef...
It isn't just Phil Spencer. The new CEO, and all the changes that have trickled down from that. They've also finally committed to fixing Windows start menu woes. They're making the Windows Phone 8 model more like Android's, so it will be free to put on smaller devices. It's like all the coke-headed money-grubbing culture that ruled all of MS under Ballmer is finally dissipating
Well, whenever stupid gamers (sorry guys it's true) defended XBox having Netflix behind a paywall by saying 'Durrr, but I pay for Live anyways cuz games', my response was usually 'It's the principle of the thing. How can you support a company that's trying to screw you so badly at every single turn?'
Now this policy change is similar, but in a good way. It's the principle of it. The fact they'd bother with this move means they've dec...
The only thing I disagree with lately is removing the Kinect. I thought that was a treasure trove of untapped potential, and the main thing to set it apart from being just a weaker PS4.
But basically MS fired all the a-holes, and the new guys are cleaning up the mess. Good for them, I really really really really really really really really really HATED Microsoft and XBox division under Ballmer and Mattrick, but things are looking up now. I still wouldn't choose XBox ...
Wow. Way to go MS. All those downvotes I got when I dissed Ballmer and Mattrick, and said Nadella and Spencer had the potential to enact some much needed change for the better. Fanboys were too loyal to admit anything needed changing. They're even fixing Windows8 start menu. It's like they're just going through the whole company and overturning large buckets of ignored complaints from Ballmer's tenure and reversing every old BS policy one by one.
@Darkstares - Not every company is anti-consumer in so many practices. Not every company makes up lies like when they said they couldn't make a kinectless xbox one. Sony made a stupid business/design decision with the psp go, it wasn't meant to shaft their consumers. MS repeatedly lies to their customers, and does anti-consumer nonsense. Then when the pre-order numbers come in, all of the sudden they come clean, and 'listen to customers'. Exact same thing with the DRM. T...
I don't need to read the other comments to have my opinion. I didn't accuse anyone of saying anything except for Microsoft, which they did say the Kinect was an integral inseparable part of the XBox One. Their biggest fans were the ones who voted to buy the XBox One despite all the negative garbage it was initially presented with. Some of them bought into the Kinect being completely integrated, and yes, in this comment section and every other of this story I see the 'they listen...
XBox One CAN NEVER work without Kinect2. It's absolutely a part of the console, like the CPU and the drive. We couldn't remove it if we wanted. Oh wait, we're still losing in sales, nevermind.
I love how MS always 'listens to fans' finally after they've got their back to the wall with sales numbers.
MS fans will eat this up, and embrace the story of how they were listened to.
MS always starts 'listening to the fans' when they are against the ropes.
They need to release a powerful console next. They should release $400 worth of 2016 priced ps4/xb1 type parts in 2016. No more gimmick garbage.
Not only that, but it's yet another lie they were caught in. Countless times they said it was basically impossible. Of course, no XBox One fans will have any problem having been lied to so directly.
Aside from that, I think Kinect2 had some amazing potential, and they didn't make one unique thing with it. If Nintendo or Media Molecule made a game meant to take best advantage of Kinect2, it would have been something amazing. It was the one last chance of XBox One d...
Good for them. They've totally gone in a direction hardware-wise that I'm not the least bit interested in, but I'm not eager to see Nintendo out of the race just yet.
devs: We finally found a use for the ESRAM crutch that helps make up a tiny bit of ground for XBox One's shortcomings. It's called tiled resources.
xb1 fans: Oh my god. Did you hear it, guyss?! Tile resources, groundbreaking technology only possible with ESRAM. MS is so forward thinking. They built the machine for the future. With DX12, and tiled resources, oh my clouds! Wait you'll see in 2020, XB1 games will be passed PS4.
Am I the only one who thinks the background textures look terribad? Like unfinished bad.
@kingdom18 yeah, because sales are the only indicator of quality. Call of Duty's consistent sales reflect how it's chock full of fresh and new ideas.
I don't think it's that Kinect 2.0 can't provide a killer game. I think it's that they haven't done anything except force internal studios to make any old game, instead of actually incentivizing creativity with the Kinect for internal and third parties. They need to have guidelines like Nintendo does that mandate and support innovative uses.
Also, couldn't tell if you already knew this by your phrasing, but the VR will use the camera for head trackin...
Don't mind the disagrees. Some people have so little vision they can't fathom any ideas they aren't used to. They won't realize how stale ff-type turn based combat has gotten until their favorite console or franchise gets over this turn-based fetish.
Personally, I think it's barely a step above playing with dice on a table. This can of course be fun, and I'm not dissing tabletop or pen and paper rpgs, but usually when I play a video game, I'm ...
I think this camera is definitely underestimated for what it can do for sandboxy type games, but the attach rate is probably only so high for the video chatting and twitchtv type features. Also, the Kinect is severely underused and underestimated. It has the potential to be as disruptive to the industry as the original ds's dual screens were, but as usual MS is too blind to see the potential, and instead they're just using it as a tv remote. So despite all that extra potential, it&...
They didn't listen to customers, they listened to sales. They didn't have to change much about XBox One. They could have just said 'these features require a persistent broadband connection' for the one's the features that really did, and 'this game requires a persistent broadband connection for all game modes' for the games that really did. There was no reason it had to be all or nothing. It was also their fault for their horrible salesmanship. During the enti...