The Kinect U-Turn

So, the mandatory Kinect is no more, Microsoft have once again made a U-Turn on its original next-gen plan. Kinect has gone from being an integral component to an optional peripheral. Like most other Xbox One gamers I haven’t even used the Kinect for much more than showing off (and the odd dashboard navigation when my controllers have run out of battery.

That being said – it is a good piece of hardware and holds far more potential than the original ever did (both in accuracy and speed).

For Microsoft this solves many problems: the price differential with PlayStation 4 has now been addressed, while internal resources dedicated to Kinect processing can now be returned to game developers.

However, on the flipside, the original vision for Xbox One as a multi-faceted all-in-one entertainment system as well as a games machine now lies in a much less coordinated manner than ever – unless this was always the plan (which we doubt).

Kinect was at the heart of everything that made Xbox One different and without it we're left with a machine that offers pretty much the exact same proposition as PS4. In fact, it’s a horrible chance of pace for a company that always stripped its rivals in the race for innovation. Just two years ago Sony were doing everything they could to match their American counterparts but now it seems that the more Xbox changes, the closer it becomes to the PlayStation design choices from launch.

This week's announcements are all about levelling the playing field with Sony. The price is the same, Games with Gold moves closer into alignment with PlayStation Plus, while non-gaming services are also like-for-like thanks to the removal of the almost criminal payment requirements that saw users charged for the privilege of using Internet Explorer, Skype and even non-Microsoft services like YouTube and Netflix.

Here at Rajakaru Games we appreciate that Microsoft is finally listening.

This market repositioning was a must for our beloved console. Microsoft’s vision for an entertainment system certainly wasn’t a bad decision in principle but the implementation and demand for this hardware was misplaced.

Kinect is the main gateway to the media functions of the Xbox One and without it the hardware looks more like the set-top boxes it was trying to replace rather than the state of the art ideas that it hasn’t fully realised.

Statistics showed that for many users, the Xbox 360 was being utilised more for media streaming than it was for actual gameplay. This was the main reason for the strategy they tried desperately to maximise but unfortunately the impact didn’t really take off.

We've seen Oculus Rift, we've experienced Sony's Project Morpheus prototype but we've still not seen Microsoft's 'Fortaliza' hardware. Envisaged as a Kinect-powered augmented reality concept, Microsoft saw it as the penultimate stepping stone in console technology before the cloud took over, rendering new client-side hardware obsolete. These industry changes and innovations certainly mean we can expect some new gameplay styles over the course of this console lifecycle and, you never know, Microsoft might just U-Turn again.

The good news for Microsoft is that games and content will always trump hardware spec. This week’s Halo 5 tease was short on details but at least re-introduced a key title with an immense level of anticipation alongside it, and the E3 line-up should be strong. Beyond that we understand that Microsoft isn't done with the cloud, and that games are being built around Azure that go beyond the utilisation's we've seen thus far.  

We definitely won't see a total rethink of the Xbox One system, but at least the focus will be where it should have been from day one - on the games.