Kinectless

Microsoft are giving us choices, we should be happy

There are many things that I was doing on the lovely morning of May 13 2014. At 8:00 AM PT, as I was busy imagining that I wielded a keyblade standing in front of my bathroom mirror, a text flies into my SMS inbox snatching my attention away from my fantasy because, I don’t know, it just drew me in. The text was a tweet, actually, sporting a link that looked way better than my hair at that moment. It was from Xbox’s major nelsons blog, with a comment following the link. It read.

@theblindwriter Look @ delivering More choices for Fans. Robbie, you so HAVE to tell me what you think! Kingdom hearts later?

I decide that my caffeine addiction can take a backseat today. I immediately fire up the web browser and stir up a new kind of weather pattern as I type in the address for major nelsons blog. I have to read what’s going on because my curiosity has taken over my frontal cortex.

When I read the article, depicting all the changes, I’m nodding like I am a poorly constructed bobblehead. An additional Games with Gold title for 360 coming in June, called Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition to go alongside “Dark Souls,” and “Charlie Murder”? Yes, very good. All entertainment apps can be accessed without the gold subscription? Yes, very good indeed. Games with Gold coming to Xbox One? Even better! There will be a hardware option that costs #$399 in the United States without the Kinect? Smashing! There is, however, something that’s even better than all of those. I believe it could be better than finding a rare cheat code to your favorite video game back in the day. It’s the notion that Microsoft is giving us options. Though they should have done it from the start, I still applaud them for realizing that giving customers choices makes for more empowering consumers, even if they are realizing it AFTER the feedback and retorts.

Kinect-2.0

But here’s something that I don’t understand. The internet disagrees with me however, saying such things as the comments below.

“Oh my god! I feel sorry for all those Kinect developers. They have to throw away their dreams now, what an epic fail Microsoft! Way to slap them in the face”

“Wow. No more Kinect? You take something away? You just do whatever you want to, don’t you Microsoft? Where’s the freedom?”

“What a way to destroy your own vision! At least Sony stuck to what they said!”

“Typical Microsoft. Next, they will take away popular games too. They dictate it, it happens, regardless of their ‘vision.”

I don’t understand those kinds of comments because I don’t understand what they mean, simply put. The video game industry is sprinkled with freedom. There’s no big push to do anything because there are many choices layered in the software and hardware and games. People can choose to pre order a game or buy it after reading a few reviews. Microsoft are giving us choices on a broader scope just as all the others are doing so to say that we don’t have choices or to even imply that this is a direct result of executive decision alone is just silly. It’s not. These choices that Microsoft is giving the gaming community happened because the community told them that we don’t want to have this, we want to have that.

Microsoft listened but some people across the spectrum don’t understand that interpretations riddle the comments section instead of discussions. Reading some comments, I wonder why some people didn’t just copy the entire article instead of giving a summary of the entire article without thoughts on the article.

That’s the beauty of blogs, blogs have text to copy and paste rather than summarizing the blog. Take the Kinect for example.

There will be two options available for Xbox One after June 1. There will be a version that has the Kinect bundle, which, I’m sure will cost the same price as the One at Launch, and there will be this unit without the Kinect. People are thinking that Microsoft are lighting the Kinect on fire and chucking it out the visionary window but in reality, they are saying it’s not mandatory. Unless I’m mistaken, I believe that the blog post says,

We will continue to offer a premium Xbox One with Kinect bundle…

Wait, let’s read that again.

We will continue to offer a premium Xbox One with Kinect bundle to deliver voice and gesture controls, biometric sign-in, instant personalization, instant scanning of QR codes, and enhanced features only available with Kinect in games such as “Kinect Sports Rivals,” “Just Dance 2014,” “Project Spark” and more.

The choices presented are pretty staggering, though they should have happened sooner and not just a few days ago, but still, people have many more options now. Developers will have a better understanding of the market because they will know that some people will have the Kinect bundled Xbox and the Kinect-less Xbox. Developers can choose whatever they want to make, either exclude the Kinect or make a Kinect game that will have to utilize the technology. Players on Xbox one can now pay for Xbox live and receive free games in return, rather than buying everything outright. People don’t have to buy a subscription if they just want to watch Netflix and play games. Better still, people don’t have to buy the Kinect. It’s a win win for everyone and I don’t classify this move as an epic fail. How is this an epic fail, overall?

In terms of their early affirmations, saying that Kinect will be glued to the Xbox One like taffy, it’s a business shift. It isn’t a change in vision. Kinect games are still in the works, there’s going to be a Kinect bundle option, and there will be the Kinect, sold separately, I’m sure, in the future, if there isn’t an option already.

In the excitement of the moment though I can sympathize why people forget that choices are a decision to choose one thing, person, or course of action in preference to others it’s a word that doesn’t even give strands of silly string weight when holding so much interpretations behind the syllables. People get caught up in interpretations rather than analyzing the definitions and understanding that interpretations make up trends and rumors but are not the culminations of business practices. Choice is just as prevalent now as ever, especially with all these new Games with Gold options. Choice has become the catalos for everything else, even selecting different types of shoes and I, for one, am very happy that choice is shaping the next console wars, not specs or interpretations.