but they do not restrict gameplay . IT is for a certain view but other than that it does not restrict in any other way. Kinect or motion controlled games have various gameplay and movement restrictions

No, those input devices are just meant for certain types of gameplay, just as Oculus is. You can make a game poorly suited to Oculus just as easily as you can one poorly suited to Kinect or the Wii Remote.

Kinect is stil bundled, it still comes mandatory, it's still going to play the same exact role it played before this. They've already stated very clearly there's absolutely no plans of coming out with an Xbox One without Kinect, and Kinect is at the very center of the Xbox One, from the moment you power it on. All this did is allowed you to unplug it without bricking your X1 and gave people an option. How does this "massive policy shift" actually change the function of the console or its philosophy?

The only thing they've done is removed a reason to complain by some people, without actually changing anything in their product.

name a good game for kinect with great mechanics that are better than normal games without kinect. . And I said game not a dance thing.

@humanity: What if you are the microphone!?

Dance Central is a game just as much as Guitar Hero, DDR, or Rockband or any other type of musical game and they all required additional input methods to make possible. So is Kinect Sports. Both very fun and lots of people enjoy them.

It comes with the system, but it no longer a mandatory piece of hardware that must be connected to the Xbox One in order to use the console.

@alexglass: there's just no point.

I know you're trying to fight the good fight. I'm excited about the new consoles and I do appreciate your posts even when are extremely technical and beyond what I know about programming. Even if none of that stuff will ever be apparent to someone not in that field, it is still interesting to read.

I shudder to think what the psychology of so many of these people is. They literally can't accept that someone might be excited about something. It's just not possible. So they feel the need to try and tear it down at every step. It happens in every single thread on this forum. The same people over and over. Crying and bitching about a product that they've already decided to hate. Not sure how many times someone needs to express how much they hate Microsoft and the xbox one. If they are this miserable on an Internet forum, I can't imagine what their real lives are like.

I spent a generation thinking that the Sony community might be a little more civil because of the reputation of xbox live, but it's the complete opposite. Th Sony fans are bitter and hateful to a degree I didn't think possible. The proof is in how many of them come here just to be negative compared to how many Microsoft fans invade the sony forum on a regular basis.

I will gladly take the community full of frat boys and 12 year olds over these guys any day. At least the frat boys and 12 year olds only exist on Live and they can be muted.

Which is a good thing. And doesn't remove any of the functionality the device had prior to this news. How does adding an option that has no bearing whatsoever on prior functionality of Kinect change what the Xbox One is?

How about you save your hyperbole, exaggerations and overreactions for a day when MS actually does what you are trying to spin this into, and comes out with a different SKU without Kinect, cancels Kinect Sports Rivals, stops supporting voice recognition control, or decides not to do cloud gaming anymore.

Then you might actually have a point.

@alexglass: I totally give you dancing games but this is also fun with mats from back then. However Sport games restrict your movements by alot. Take the football game for example. It is just some dumb minigame which has not even much to do with the real game. It has been done this way because of the restrictions kinect has. People who like football and football games are rather not playing the kinect thing if they can get the real deal.

Now they've got my attention.

But being that I'll have a PS4 and a PC, they are going to need to have some exclusives that I want to play. Pretty disappointed with Xbox and 360's exclusives. But here's hoping.

The customer is ALWAYS right!

Simple. Before the policy shift, every developer on Xbox One could create their games knowing full-well that every player would have their Kinect plugged in. Now any third-party developer that wants to make Kinect a key part of their game experience is forced to sell to a split user-base, and the number of people that are extremely Kinect averse was apparently large enough to make Microsoft perform these PR gymnastics. Just like the current generation, it's going to be incredibly difficult to get a publisher to fork over significant development dollars for Kinect-heavy games, meaning we're going to see token implementation at best outside of Microsoft's studios.

Now all yous can stfu about big brother MS for now.

Stated by Albert Penello, Product Management and Planning at Microsoft Corporation

We still believe in Kinect. We aren’t interested in splitting the development base. The more demos I’ve seen, the more I’ve used it – the more impressed I am. The team feels strongly about Kinect, and I hope we’re able to prove that when you use it.

We also have a ton of privacy settings to allow people to turn off the camera, or microphones, or put it in a state just for “Xbox On” and IR blasting – there will be a lot of user control for that.

The thing we all understood, and hence this change, is that there are some scenarios where people just may not be comfortable. We wanted people to be 100% comfortable, so we allow the sensor to be unplugged. And clearly the “it dropped” scenario is possible.

The most obvious thing is watching a DVD/BD, or streaming a movie, or HDMI pass-through, your experience isn’t impacted (except you miss voice and IR blasting)

There is no “gotcha”, but obviously, if there is a game that REQUIRES Kinect (like Rivals), or something where Kinect IS the experience (like Skype), those won’t work.

That said, for people who have privacy concerns there are user control settings, which we believe are great._

I think you're trying to make an argument about a split user base, which there isn't since the Kinect comes standard.

Instead your gibberish is about as post-worthy as me saying developers don't know if every gamer have their controllers plugged in, therefore they're less likely to support the controller.

No, the ability to unplug Kinect is not going to have any impact whatsoever on developer support and I am now 10 IQ points dumber for being stupid enough and actually taking time to respond to this nonsense and straw reaching.

They are totally changing how the console will operate and that's not a big policy change in your eyes? It wouldn't even work without kinect and now it will. Honestly, I think that is bigger than getting rid of the 24 hour check in.

Kinect comes standard, but not everyone is going to plug it in and use it. Thus, a split userbase. Surely that's easy enough for you to understand.

Maybe if I lived in your own twisted reality of how the video game industry works, I would.

I chose to remain here, on Planet Earth, in this dimension.

@alexglass: Being belligerent and rude isn't helping your case.

Reaching for straws isn't helping yours either. You're digging a whole so big no shovel on planet Earth can help dig you out of.

I am particularly thrilled by this news and I feel I should add something to the level of discussion being displayed in this thread. Personally, I was seriously concerned with the requirement due to the possibility that if the X1 bricked it may have made my Kinect useless.

Can I get games from Redbox yet? No? Is that announcement coming in 2 weeks?

Again, belligerence and rudeness are not helping you. Continue these unprovoked attacks, and you only demonstrate that your opinion is not worth being taken seriously by me or anyone else on these forums.

Wow, you're an embarrassingly shriveled cock.

What @starvinggamer was clearly saying was that, given that the Kinect has been unplugged in favor of appeasing the consumer, it is clear that some portion of the prospective userbase doesn't like the peripheral. That being the case, a developer who may want deep Kinect integration in their game is going to have a hard time selling it to those users. If those users represent a large percentage of the eventual install base it's going to be difficult to convince a publisher that a game should limit its appeal by requiring use of the Kinect.

Simply putting a Kinect in the box is not enough coercion to make people use it. How many people used the Kinect features in ME3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier or Skyrim?

I'm sorry if you get your feelings hurt when someone calls out an irrational, unrealistic, and completely baseless argument. And if you take it so personally then you should know your initial argument proved the worth of your opinion to begin with. The bad part is you presented it as if it was a fact without actually thinking it through.

I don't think there's anything wrong in attacking and exposing a nonsense argument for what it is. I've already spent more time responding to it then it deserved.

Good day to you sir.

I AM the microphone..

These kind of constant 180s are not the moves of a company that is confident in their position. Hilarious.

Still, it's good news for everyone. Giving people the option of having it plugged in or not is impossible to argue against, and moves like this are what people wanted from them in the first place. Choice. Give us choices.

Oh snap!

This. Been a PR disaster from the start.

You've come to the right place, as this is a video game forum, so as a person who is really into this stuff and has been following it in detail I can tell you that it is a video game console that has a controller pad and takes discs to play games

For those saying they wont release a Kinectless bundle think logically. All these reversals that everyone said would never happen happend. If XB1 doesnt meet expectations Microsoft will, and have done everything in their power to appease the masses.

As someone who's only experience with the original Kinect has been frustration and rage this is good news. The only people who have gotten to use Kinect 2.0 claim it still has pretty severe latency problems meaning it still isnt viable for gaming. And I have no interest in Skype via The One nor facial recognition and voice commands so for me it's pretty useless. And for those that want all those party games i'm sure Microsoft will rope Rare and Harmonix into making more. So who loses? The 'Hardcore' gamer who thinks Kinect will revolutionise gaming? Okay then...

@starvinggamer: Yeah, let's talk about how all the possibilities for the Wiimote were fulfilled...

If they make a fable 4 some day and its not a kinect game i might buy one a few years later.

Funny, everything I've read says quite the opposite. In fact we were just discussing IGN's hands-on from a couple of days ago...

And work it does. The response time on Kinect 2.0 is very obviously much faster than the first Kinect, which Majesco made obvious by switching back and forth on-the-fly between Xbox 360 and Xbox One builds of the game (because certain sections they wanted to show me didn’t work properly on the One yet).Seeing the two Kinects work at the same time in the exact same space was telling. Input lag is no longer noticeable – that’s not to say it isn’t there because, well, of course it is – but it no longer feels like you’re fighting the Kinect to get it to read what you’re doing.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/08/ive-seen-a-real-xbox-one-kinect-game-in-action-and

What sources are you reading?

Yet another wise 180 from Microsoft. One less point of failure.

You're not attacking and exposing the argument, you're attacking the person making the argument. And the truth of the matter is that everything you're accusing me of, making nonsense arguments and refusing to listen to reason, you're actually committing yourself.

yes fuck kinect.

This would hopefully push Sony to do something more outrageous. I love this competition!

@alexglass: Well I was going off of peoples impressions from e3, granted that isnt the place to test such a thing.

I hear The Gunstringer was pretty good.

What reason? You are actually making a serious argument about the ability to unplug Kinect having an effect on developer support and causing a split user base.

There is nothing reasonable about that. It totally lacks common sense or understanding of what causes developer to drop support. And if you are missing that kind of common sense, then go and find some proof to back up such nonsense.

And that's not an attack on you, but it is an attack on what you are claiming. It's just nonsense.

It must be a miracle that online gaming made it with MS and Sony giving us the option of unplugging our ethernet chords!

Are you making a serious argument that Kinect being optional is going to make developers embrace it? Did that work for any number of things from 32X or ROB all the way to DDR pads and plastic instruments and Wii Fit boards? It must be glorious in alexglass' world where all devices are accepted flaws and all just because a vendor releases it.

Here is an example for our "the resident expert": There are a number of HDTV, blu-ray players, and consoles that support 3D out of the box. Why isn't everything (games, movies, broadcasts) 3D supported right now? Maybe the problems and technical issues are bigger than "it comes with it, out of the box" can solve.

If our resident expert needs a more direct hint re-read this again and think about Kinect again: Maybe the problems and technical issues are bigger than "it comes with it, out of the box" can solve.

@hailinel: Not really. I'd be more than happy playing a puzzle game or a third person game using the Oculus Rift.

First person will definitely be the creme of the crop though.

@alexglass: Whoa, pull back on the reigns there. I agree, people are being a bit irrational about the policy changes Microsoft has done in the past month, but calling people stupid, based on their opinions is just as idiotic and irrational. I think what most people are trying to say is this is a confirmation that force bundling in an accessory (and yes this is still an accessory) is just a money grab from Microsoft and that it will still have no bearing on the development of hardcore games. I doubt cross platform games (which will consist of 90% of game releases) will institute a real meaningful use for the Kinect (or that weird touchpad on the PS4). But hey, that is just my opinion, and I hope I am wrong and some developer comes up with some incredible way to make the Kinect a key part of future gaming, but it hasn't happened the last three years, and I don't see that happening in the future. It doesn't mean the Kinect is some crappy POS accessory, because in my opinion (see what I did there), it is a fantastic device and for SOME people well worth the $100 price tag. But shouldn't it be an option for all users?

I'll give it to you that there has been a lot of unnecessary hate of the Xbox One going around (I have been a part of it) but your comment is equally negative and it's towards actual human beings rather than a product. I'm not saying you're wrong. I just think you're doing exactly what you're complaining about.

No.

Good God! You seriously have an issue comprehending my posts, you know that? Dude, every single time you reply to one of my posts you come out with some twisted freaking understanding that is completely different and totally misses the mark. It's fascinating how poor of a reader you are and how bad your attention to detail is. Not to mention it doesn't help your boastful claims of being a programmer and coding expert with knowledge of technical talk from personal expertise.

Seriously man, is English your second language or something? Well this is both genuine advice and a request: Please learn to slow down and understand what you are actually reading before you hit reply.

It's funny to see some of these responses. Xbox is fucked due to their previous stances (many vocal critics said) now many of those critics see the issues reversed and it's "What is their vision? it has no vision!"

Uhhh... games? Isn't that what you wanted? They are giving you what you wanted and you're still bitching. And Sony isn't some white knight (was was evidenced by the RAM issues that came out, many acting as if the Sony OS wouldn't have RAM dedicated to it, as if it was magic before that).

Kinect will have an audience, but now we just get a Microsoft console more than anything, which is a good thing as in the last generation they did a lot of things better than Sony did. Good competition to come in game consoles.

They wouldn't develop exclusively for Kinect anyway. Just like how you said "no developer in their right mind" would limit their userbase (to those with just Kinects), they similarly wouldn't wall themselves into just releasing on one platform when they could easily release on two or three. The existence of the PS4 makes compelling Kinect games something that will likely never happen, or that will be incredibly rare.

That's awesome. I would suggest for them to have a cheaper no kinect box but then that would defeat the purpose that MS has for that camera

I don't know why you'd say that given the amount of PR-spin you do on these forums. I'd think you'd be happy for more people to buy the Xbox One knowing they don't need to have the Kinect plugged in.

It's not just conspiracy theorist, but people with actual reasons for not wanting to have to plug it in. The depth of field has been improved so it might work in my living room now, if I didn't have furniture in the way and had a place to actually put it. I have no interest in Kinect games, so why would I simply want to have this plugged in and crammed somewhere out of the way, as opposed to simply leaving it in the box?

Ideally I would prefer a Kinect-less SKU, but this is still beneficial to me down the road when there are eventually enough exclusives I'd be interested in that would compel me to pick up an Xbox One.