Microsoft's Also Making Changes to Xbox Live

I am glad that Microsoft is listening to the public.

" It doesn't sound like anything's going to change tomorrow, no, no, no"

"Two, media giants, pissing in the wind, in front of the media, no, no, no"

Cool. On June 9th I'll be living in a house with all my gaming stuff in the living room big enough for a Kinect. xD

Still not planning on buying current-gen just yet, but there are at least a few old Kinect games I'd like to rent or try out. (Wreckateer, Tubeman...)

I imagine it is identical to PSN+, so the answer is hell no. With PSN+ Instant Game Collection you only "possess" the rental key to play the free games so long as you are a subscriber. The keys go away when it lapses, and come back when you re-up. You haven't bought a single free game. It's the Sega Channel.

We can safely say that most of Xbox's strategies are in reaction to Playstation. As long as the services are close to parity consumers seem to be happy. There's apparently no desire for one-upping at this point, post-launch.

This would be awesome if I didn't already switch to using my PS3 for Netflix. Much better interface anyways [last I checked].

@patrickklepek- Just please tell me you didn't watch "Godzilla's Revenge".

For me, this has gotten me to finally purchase an Xbox One. I will be getting one around June since I'll actually have the time to truly play it but until then I'll still enjoy my 360 and all of the stuff I'm playing on it. Like WWE All Stars.

They are definitely admitting they were wrong about the Kinect, but they are standing by their price point. The Xbox One with Kinect is still $499, and they're only getting to the same price as the PS4 because they took out the camera.

The worst part is that Microsoft has come out and said publicly that the camera cost almost as much as the console to make (probably both in production and R&D), and yet the console only drops to $399 without it.

If anything Microsoft is saying they think their product is worth more than it actually is.

The Xbox One, by itself, should be $299 or less.

PS+ is one of my faorite things about Playstation; if MS can provide that to their customers then good on em.

Yes. The only reason MS lets you keep the Games with Gold games on the 360 after your subscription has lapsed is because they couldn't engineer a way on their old console to tie downloaded game access to your Xbox Live status. If they could make it subscription based on the 360 too, they would.

It works for me because I'm still making my way thru Sleeping Dogs three months after I let my Gold subscription end.

@patrickklepek Do you have any idea what this means for consumers in the UK or Europe? I have only just got to this news, so apologies if I missed it. Is this a US thing only - surely not?

EDIT: Just seen £349 UK ignore. Although it appears you can get a Watchdogs bundle with Kinect for £409 - seems much better value.

Breaking News: Microsoft changes console name from Xbox One to PlayStation 4.

"From the start, Xbox has been all about extremely slow recognition of important market changes, and ignorance to consumer preference, and today we've cemented this by applying to our company the name of the brand that we have, in an almost wholesale fashion, mimicked every premium feature - proving once again that we have no idea what we're doing in the console marketplace."

Just to clear up some confusion: Games with Gold on 360 is unchanged. Only on Xbox One do you require a Gold Subscription to access GWG games.

@golguin: Correct, and all games going forward on 360 are also yours.

@scottygrayskull: He would need at least a one month subscription to download it. 48 hour and 14 day trials do not count.

Not just years. From the very first day that subscription services were locked behind the gold pay wall, people complained. It's just that Microsoft never had any reason to listen to the complaints until recently because of the position that the 360 held as an online gaming/media platform. But now Sony and even Nintendo have upped the ante to the point that Microsoft can't just do the same old thing that they did for the 360.

It was never a "You asked, we listened," no matter how much Microsoft wants to frame it that way now. This is more of a "We finally caved in to your demands. Are you happy, now?" situation.

The big thing with this news is, apparently, Microsoft is keeping the $399 price in Canada. Where as Sony raised the price of the PS4 by $50 to "compensate" for the "weak" Canadian dollar. So in less than a year Microsoft basically jumped Sony... in Canada. How long that lasts remains to be seen, but those who have yet to buy into the next console generation will get a second chance to purchase at the same cost as customers in the United States.

Kinect is good, but I prefer buttons.

MS Gold is sounding like a more attractive deal now though. Ironically I disliked Gold more because of what MS kept locked behind it. I would prefer tiered pricing but this is probably the best that we will get for now.

In recent news, Microsoft spokespersons were quoted as saying; "Oops!".

Shows competition is good for everyone though :)

I always thought the most annoying thing about the paywall was the people who would rise to the defense of this blatant scam. "What bro?!?!? its only 3 bucks a month! What? are you some kind of homeless person?!" Seriously, imagine if any other company tried to pull this bullshit, imagine if a notification showed up on your iPhone "asking" you 3 dollars a month just for the privileged of being able to use Netflix on your phone.

On the plus side, hopefully MS will be more likely to redesign the god-awful Xbone UI now that there aren't guaranteed Kinect voice commands to fall back on...

God dammit, I own Dark Souls and SS4 and I hate brawlers so Charlie Murder is out. Fuck it.

I just want my media extender for my Xbone.

Was it really such a big deal to not being able to watch Netflix and shit without gold? I mean, aren't those who use Xbox for games already gold members?

I have never really understood the uproar about it to be honest. Yeah I get that some people use it as their streaming box or whatever. But that's just stupid when you can get any number of devices to do the same for a fraction of the price. And if you use it for games as well then you most likely have gold.

This has always been a non issue for me. Even if the Xbox One would have come out as originally planned it wouldn't've changed my gaming habits in the slightest. May be I'm just the ideal target market for when it comes to games.

..."free games, monthly deals, and other great benefits." Again, Microsoft appears to be taking cues from Plus.

Well, it's just Games with Gold coming over to Xbox One.

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. Still, all good moves for XBOne as a platform. It's a bit funny MS using the "you asked, we listened" move on this though. Haven't people been bitching about the XBL Gold pay wall for Netflix for years?

"On Xbox One, active Gold membership required to play free games you've downloaded"

So, is the PS Plus format only applying to Xbox One games, while 360 remains as it has been?

I actually preferred owning the games, even if the selection wasn't great. It always bugged me anytime someone would bring up PS+ as an unfavorable comparison. They weren't the same thing. With PS+, it was a service you were paying for, not free product. For me, GWG was a nice bonus on a service I was already subscribed to. And the fact that I could let Gold lapse, as I periodically do, and be able to play these games whenever has much more appeal to me than a Netflix type buffet of games I would probably never ever get to.

Good. MS has done a ton of things right since Titanfall came out, be it through system updates, "unofficial" price drops, or management changes, and today's news pushes it even further.

I'm honestly not a fan of the Games with Gold change, I much prefer being able to keep your games if you drop your subscription even if they were a little bit older than the PS+ offerings...but I also know I'm probably in the minority on that and people want newer games with required subscription. That's fine.

I'd never use the X1 without Kinect because navigation is much easier - works fine for me 90% of the time - but again, if people want it, they may as well give it to them.

When Sony began to pull ahead noticeably when the year began I was pretty happy to see it because I knew it would humble MS and make them get their shit together, and that appears to be what's happening now. Same thing that happened when Sony was utterly clueless on what people wanted with the PS3. Getting your ass kicked makes you try harder. Hooray for competition.

Man total capitulation!

while I'm glad they are being responsive to lack of demand, I have to admit it seems like they more or less removing every market reason the Xbox One has to exist too... Now it becomes solely a race to the bottom on price and exclusives.

This gen feels over already, PS4 has more or less won.

IMHO removing the kinect is a dumb move, as it will kill any hopes for some decent kinect based innovation happening down the line.

In hardware terms the kinect is the only "advantage" the xbone currently has over the ps4, Microsoft should have swallowed the bitter pill and just dropped the price, that way they would maybe have had a chance of actually overtaking sony. It'd also increase the chances for an "kinect killerapp" actually happening down the line.

Removing the paywall from basic apps had been overdue a damn long time, many many years in fact, hardly a move to praise them for.

But the kinect-less bundle is gonna split the user base and won't add that many new users to the existing one. Overall it feels like a pretty shortsighted and lukewarm move in reaction to the current ps4 dominance. If MS wants to make up some ground they need to do something that's actually gonna cost them and not just use the cheapest/laziest ways to generate goodwill.

Like an earlier commenter wrote before: at best this will give MS parity with Sony, but that won't help with actually making up sonys current lead.

Sounds like E3!

Hold on. Do we own the free games we downloaded with "Games for Gold" months ago? They can't retroactively say, "You don't own them anymore" right? @patrickklepek

I have to remember that as an early-adopter-type-person... I need to live with no regrets and not let this bother me... then again I can't stop picturing my 100 bucks burning in a trash bin.

Sucks that MS is going the "you don't own these games" route with G4G, as that was the only good thing XBL had over PS+, but hey, at least people can demo somewhat new games and purchase them at their local GameStops if they like 'em. I just hope they're better about communicating this than Sony has been. And hey, at least you don't have to have Gold to use the media apps that you could literally use ANYWHERE ELSE for free, so there's that.

I'm not sure, but it almost sounds like you think this is a bad thing. The PS4 is a sweet system, and it's kicking the Xbone's ass.

Seriously though, MS should have understood this. They were so preoccupied under Balmer with being the center of the living room that Microsoft forgot that their products need to fulfill their primary functions first. The problem with the Xbone is the exact same thing that ruined Windows 8: they were so obsessed with going after Apple that they forgot their core markets.

I bet we're still going to hear a lot about TV. TVTVTVTVTVTVTVTVTVTV. Granted, probably not as much as we had from Mattrick.

At least they admitted their error quickly. Sony was dogged on their vision on the PS3 until around 2010. Yeah, MS was full of shit, but they've proven agile and quick to admit fault, so congrats to them on that.

It seems very spotty... Works for some, but doesn't work for way many others. Here, have a fun video.

While this kind of stuff is "Too little, too late" for me personally to consider buying a console from MS in the near future, I'm glad for people who this was still an issue for and that now, Microsoft making changes will keep Sony on their feet. Competition is always best for the industry and I hope MS continue to make good choices.

MORE STUFF LIKE THIS!

A friend was all excited that Saints Row 3 is coming to GWG, and was going to get a temp gold pass to download it. Guess they can't do that now.

They're making the changes that they should have started with, now they just need to bring the games. I'm hoping we see an actual fight here, because Sony beat the crap out of MS in the first round.

Microsoft execs: "We Sony now boyss"

Pretty hilarious to watch Microsoft fall off their high horse.

@kalos: guess I should learn how to read, thanks!

Sweet, level the playing field and make it an actual fight.

Now they just need to add support for logitech steering wheels and I might buy one for forza.

New version of SF4 comes out in June as a downloadable upgrade. I wonder if you would be able to upgrade that free xbl version to Ultra. Or if it would be worth the risk, considering(i assume) its like the psn where you only have the games for the time you are subscribed.

#YES #YES #YES

While I'll likely end up getting a Kinect-less Xbox One at some point, I'm kinda sad to see things go down as they are. I'd much rather had some killer Kinect games, that made me finally see the promise come to life. That said, we now know that affordable VR is the path into the future, and that this future is so close, some of us already live it today - which kinda makes the promise of Kinect alone obsolete.

Let's hope VR delivers. It's certainly high time for the first next gamechanger since polygonal 3D graphics.

Free Dark Souls? Well now I can test out my "the best Souls game is the first one you played" theory.

WOW, Phil Spencer bringing in some huge changes, its a real fight now.

Kinect is utter shite.

Voice dosnt work 90% of the time and the tv stuff here isn't even available yet so whats the point.

They should be offering a partial refund for people that the voice is useless and also where all the tv shit isn't available.

@nickhead:

Popular entertainment apps will be available for all Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners... Coming in June, anyone with an Xbox will be able to access popular entertainment experiences - whether or not you have an Xbox Live Gold membership. --xbox.com

Patrick Klepek, games business baller, shot caller.