To the question of a Kinect-less SKU...
If MS is NOT looking at that right now, wouldn't they be hyping Kinect-centric games?
Wouldn't Kinect-required games be constantly publicized?
But they're not, the launch games hyped to use Kinect ended up dropping/reducing that functionality.
MS is reduced to hyping the voice control aspect of Kinect, which obvously doesn't require $100 cameras,
and PS4 has no technical limitation to doing just as well, even if Sony hasn't currently developed that as much.
Fun party type motion games can also be done via PSEye, even if in a slightly different way.
MS themselves provide no indication of believing that Kinect has any relevance in gaming.
Given that, and the fact that PS4 is eating the gamer market for lunch,
while the hypothetical non-gamer interested-in-$500-voice-controlled-alternate-cablebox-interface market hasn't shown up.
(and again, PS4 has no technical limitation to doing voice control, and CAN interface with/control cable boxes/etc via HDMI, even if not displaying it's own graphical content on-screen)
Dropping their price to parity by un-bundling Kinect so that they can at least compete on even footing with exclusives and less tech-savvy customers seems a no-brainer.
In the end, who 'wins' the generation is of secondary importance to BOTH Sony and MS, they both just want to be profitable, and it's possible to do that while being #2, even a #2 with 30% share.







