There's no back and forth OP. .
I have no idea why people insist on Kinect being at the center of the console and being able to unplug it as contradicting philosophies. Nothing wrong with being able to unplug it, and especially making sure you still have access to Xbox One in the event you accidentally break your Kinect. It makes a lot more sense for a lot of people.
Here's a link to the interview the OP is talking about. I particularly liked this.
There are plenty of pundits out there who say all console wars are won on price. You have the more expensive console because you've refused to remove Kinect from the equation. So how do you respond to those people?
I think it's always about experience in the end. I'm not discounting price at all, the economy is tough, and buying into the next generation, whether it's us or someone else, is not an insignificant amount of money. I get that. What I say is, we're committed to Xbox One in the long run – we have a long roadmap of features, of games that we're going to bring – and Kinect is critical. We've given Kinect to the biggest developers on the planet and they've integrated it in some very interesting ways; along with Smart Glass which has created some really compelling scenarios.
And now we're going to unlock those same creative capabilities in the independent developers. You may remember, when the original Kinect got into the hands of the Windows development community, there was this explosion of creativity. I've really been excited by the number of indies coming to me as part of ID@Xbox and telling me what they want to do with cloud and Kinect – they can only rely on that if they know Kinect is a consistent part of the platform.
Common sense. Wish gamers would use theirs.
You may disagree on how much of the Xbox One proposition has changed since Don Mattrick issued that statement and reversed some of the digital concepts …
Which concepts did he reverse?
Well, the idea of daily online authentication, the control and restriction of pre-owned game sales …
Okay, so those two specifically.
Yes. And the idea of being able to share digital games …
We didn't reverse that.
But they're in the background now. I wonder how much of that proposition, which was very Steam-like, will come back?
We're committed to the digital ecosystem that we talked about at the beginning of Xbox One. Absolutely. That's why I wanted to be clear on what you were referring to with the word 'reversal'. Other people have tried to twist this a little bit, but it's important that we remain in a two-way dialogue with gamers and potential customers about what they would like to see. Consoles today are as much a service as they are an individual purchase – our commitment through Xbox Live and updating the software and keeping the games coming is a long-term service commitment. The service gets better through direct feedback with the people who are using it.
What we heard from gamers is that they enjoyed the physical DRM they had with the 360 ecosystem and they wanted to add that to Xbox One. So we added physical DRM to the digital DRM plan that we had. When we did that, maths takes over and some things had to move out. But the core of that digital ecosystem is absolutely something that we believe in, and we haven't reversed it. You'll be able to buy games as physical and digital goods, you'll be able to share games with everybody in your house, and other features that we talked about will definitely be coming down the line.
Lol @ that subtle digg. Now that's more like the MS I like. :) I'm assuming the "other features" means the ability to share with other friends, and I like that he used the word definitely. But I really want to hear more about this soon. Still pisses me off they can't clarify this now for so many of us that really care about this and is a major selling point.
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