Would Xb one have got into a sales funk if it launched as Kinect optional?

[Zanten]

I think the removal of the Kinect from the start would have helped a bit, but I think it was a bit of a mix.

See, the DRM thing, that was a BIG no-no to much of the market, including many elements that had previously been quite loyal (here meaning spending lots of gaming time on) Xbox products, and may well have been planning to get the 'Xbox 720' before its real name, and its policies, were revealed. It put gamers on the defensive, made us feel like like we were essentially having things dictated to us 'This is how things will be in the market, because Future.' Even when it was reversed, what, a week or so after E3, it wasn't hard to figure that they were responding less to a 'Socially Conscious' urge and more, like most companies, to the fact that they didn't want to get slaughtered in sales. So their reversal, while bringing some people back to the fold, didn't vindicate them completely.

This led to people being far more stringent when it came to the OTHER things they disliked about the console; if DRM hadn't happened, more people might just have grumbled and bought the Kinect-required console anyway. But having already been burned by DRM, the response was "Oh no you ****ing don't," and there was no interest in 'meeting Microsoft halfway' because... well, why should we?

Throw in the smaller, nitpicky things that hadn't reeeeally been considered an issue before, but were now just stark reminders, in the wake of the DRM, of things that were just kind of irritating about Microsoft. Off the top of my head this included the paywall on video streaming, horrid Xbox Arcade publishing policies, the paywall on free to play multiplayer games, the home screen being filled with ads, all things that had existed in the previous generation, and had been tolerated, but now was on a list titled 'Reasons Microsoft Is A Dick.' These did get fixed, at various times, for obvious reasons.

Finally, factor in the fact that since the release of the Kinect 1.0 on the Xbox 360, Microsoft's non-Kinect exclusives had dried up to pretty much Halo/Gears/Forza/Fable, and a few titles ported over from PC. While Sony was looking, on the PS3, like this company filled with new and varied exclusive titles and IPs, the Xbox 360's later-half just looked stale, leaving some to wonder how the later-half of the Xbox One's lifespan would go.



So, yes, Kinect's removal would have helped. But not doing the DRM in the first place would have helped a LOT more, because it wouldn't have stuck the Xbox One firmly on the defensive.