Microsoft ruined the Kinect by forcing it on gamers at the beginning of this generation.

The mandatory Kinect just led to many gamers shunning the One, and a lot of people refused to buy it because it raised the price of the console.

Microsoft had no Kinect games that really stood out ready by launch, so the only use the Kinect was getting was as a navigation tool and webcam (for the most part), making it hard to justify the $100 price hike.

Due to all of this, the Kinect has been getting a lot of bad publicity, not for being bad hardware (it certainly isn't), but for taking away gamer's abilities to choose for themselves what they like. In short, it became the symbol of the Xbox One's shortcomings, even though it may not have deserved it.

Now, with the Xbox One available without the Kinect, it is obvious that a lot (if not most) gamers will choose to forgo the Kinect and save a hundred dollars, especially since it got all that bad publicity. And since most gamers won't be using Kinect, game devs won't be making worthwhile games for it.

Microsoft doomed their own innovation by making it mandatory. All it did was push gamers away from it, and by taking it out so early gamers will never fully accept it either. If they had demonstrated its power through innovative games, and gave their customers a choice on whether to get it or not (like the Kinect last generation of Morpheus this generation), the Kinect may have done a lot better in the long run.

I think Microsoft Ruined Xbox One's Potential by bundling it with Kinect... If MS started the generation with a $399 price tag, I think the sales would be a lot more closer than they are right now since the extra $100 turned off many people and the drm/tv stuff didn't help either! Sure the console would still be weaker but I don't think it would have mattered as much imo

PS: I think locking this one would have been a better idea loll since no one has commented on this one yet

Lol, I have no clue what happened, I was too busy with damage control to notice that I got the wrong thread locked XD

Kinda glad they have a Kinectless X1 people will buy it separate once it actually gets some good to decent games. But so far it really has none and there are none coming out in the near future. D4 could be cool with the Kinect but it still way too early to tell.

They misread the market's needs and thought this new kinect would be as or even more popular then the first one. Its their own mistake. It also was a big reason why the X1 is so much less powerful than the ps4.

IMO gamers ruin the kinects potential buy protesting against it forcing MS to remove it. The bundling was a good idea as it allowed for the potential to be realised even if it takes awhile to be shown

The bad idea was Bundling it with no software for the first 6 months, They needed a compelling Kinect title day 1. Not a $100 promise that there might be something good maybe in the future.

That as well. even though it had no compelling software built from the groundup for kinect,, there were games that utilized quite well. Love fifa swearing ,, especially if your mates hate losing XD. What i was trying to say is,, gamers should have given ms at least till the end of this year to show games fully utilizing kinect in a useful way, Theres a kinect indie game where you have to use your body to reveal platform to jump on, that looked cool.

Interesting perspective. I know my reason for not buying XBO was that Kinect was bundled when there was no game for Kinect that justified the bundling. Even if there was a stellar game, I would rather optional accessory devices like Kinect really should be positioned as optional.

Wouldn't you rather buy Kinect that is bundled with some compelling Kinect software? It worked for the X360, where owning the console, I bought Kinect + Kinect Sports for $200 additional and I was happy to have done that at the time.

I wouldn't pay $200 for Kinect 2.0 + Kinect Sports again, but if they made some new compelling software, I certainly see a $150 price as possibly worth it.

You also have to consider how much microsoft has pissed of developers with all these 180s.

I bet microsoft got exclusives from EA and Capcom because they wanted the console to be market leader due to the "no used games" policy. They backtracked (devs pissed off)

Kinect bundled with every console so devs know how many people have kinect and can create games for it without worrying about it not selling. (backtracked). Think of how pissed of a dev will be at the moment if they have already started creating a Kinect game.

I bet they are not very happy about this. Its just like how the saturn released early and pissed of the industry.