After the Xbox One’s initial announcement of the product’s features, people speculated as to what would change and what would stay. The console wasn’t, as people reacted, a step forward for Microsoft but rather a step back.
Luckily, Microsoft heard these complaints and attempted to fix some of the problems. One of the announcements was in regards to the Xbox One’s necessity to have Kinect perpetually running. The development team at Microsoft dispelled these complaints by altering the console’s overall system. The Xbox One would no longer need the Kinect to function.
Furthermore, this meant for some users that the change would mean that the Xbox One could be bought without Kinect and bring down the price to more equally match the lower price of the PS4. However, Microsoft’s corporate VP Phil Harrison put those rumors to rest.
When the rumor came up Harrison commented that the “Xbox One is Kinect … They are not separate systems. An Xbox One has chips, it has memory, it has Blu-Ray, it has Kinect, it has a controller. These are all part of the platform ecosystem.”
Though Microsoft worked hard to reverse unpopular decisions in the past, it seems a little late for them to change anything else. Microsoft hopes that the Kinect’s ability as a console aid will alter the way people approach gaming and the platform as a whole.