One could say, Microsoft has pulled yet another 180 and finally went back on the Xbox One needs Kinect to be the fully featured consoles as it was designed and there is no other way. People love voice commands and signing in with their faces says Microsoft but yet they made the call they had to. The Xbox One will start shipping without the Kinect on June 9th for $399 and will now directly compete with the PS4. All of this is based on consumers feedback. One may say, that means consumers have been buying the more powerful and cheaper PS4 until now. Will they buy more Xbox One’s starting in June? Probably.
In a blog post by Xbox Head Phil Spencer it was outlined what these changes mean and that just about all apps and features will function without the Kinect which will be able to purchased separately later on. Xbox LIVE members will also keep receiving games with gold for free via their subscription and that will also start on Xbox One this summer with games like Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Halo: Spartan Assault. You can also expect some 50-70% discounts on games like Forza 5 and Ryse. Microsoft is going all out here and will do everything they can to combat the Sony powerhouse from dominating going forward.
This price cut comes less than a year after the console was launched and had been lagging behind the PS4 ever since. One of the main things fans will like to hear is that the Xbox LIVE membership pay-wall for apps like Netflix will be coming down as well, which Sonyss consoles never had. Micorosft is making all of the right moves here, it will be interesting to see where this will lead.
You can read more about the console news here. Below we also have an outline of the digital initiatives for Xbox.
