Copy and pasted from Reddit

Boy that Kinect not required to be plugged in announcement sure turned a lot of heads. I immediately saw a lot of responses that understood the intent of this change. While others, jumped to the (scary) thought of Microsoft selling a Kinect-less Xbox One in the future. I'll just say it is extremely unlikely this will happen. If it ever does, it'll be years and years down the road.

The point I want to make is every policy change we made since E3 aren't complete reversals/180s/make like the PS4. But rather tailor our policies to allow more choices and options while keeping most of our original vision intact. Our executives made it pretty clear that their ears were going to be wide open to listen to public feedback and so far I, for one, are quite pleased with recent announcements.

Here are my thoughts:

DRM Policy

Change: Xbox one no longer requires 24hr check in.

Effect: Removal of 10 people family sharing plan. People can now play offline, trade disc games, sell used games.

Vision: We are still pushing for a digital distribution model, we want people to have their games wherever they go and whenever. We want people to play a game while waiting for another game. We introduced the Home Gold program. One gold account, everyone on the console gets gold, on their own gamertags. One purchase, everyone in the family can play, on their own gamertags. You go to your friends house, all you need to do is sign in, and you and all your buddies can enjoy all your games.

Included chat headset

Change: We are now including a headset in every box.

Effect: Everyone who doesn't want to use the Kinect to chat, don't have to.

Vision: We are still very confident in the abilities of the Kinect's audio abilities. Including a chat headset allows the chat audio to be separated from game audio instead of everything all mixed together coming out of your TV.

Kinect requirement

Change: The Kinect is no longer required to be plugged in at all times.

Effect: The Kinect is no longer required to be plugged in at all times.

Vision: This changes nothing about our original vision, and that is to guarantee to game developers 100% adoption rate. Every Xbox One will come with a Kinect. If game developers implement Kinect features in their games, everyone who has an Xbox One will be able to experience it. Every Kinect feature you have heard about will not go away. We already allow the Kinect to be completely turned off and no one will stop you from turning the Kinect around to face a wall or wrapped up in an audio dampening box. Apparently, this wasn't good enough for some people, so now you don't have to have it plugged in. If your Kinect ever breaks, your console will still work while you get a replacement. This is a good change.

http://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/1k8qtl/complete_reversal_of_policy_vs_changes_in_policy/

I don't get that either. Atleast with DRM and used game policies had legitimate reasons for their existence. The kinect requirement was just forcing something down gamers throat but for no legitimate reason. If I can still turn it completely off and I can ductape it and throw it in a "sound dampening box" then why on earth can't I unplug it? Just a strange policy.

The engineers might had a different vision than yours. Probably make full use of Kinect.

People didn't know most of the time why they were criticizing to start with.

They were simply attempting to force people to use it, which would make it certain that developers would use it and that they could implement anything they wanted using Kinect and it would affect 100% of their base.  Advertising, for example, or OS features that hinged on Kinect.  They wanted to push through total adoption, as that would make everything easier from their side and push other parties to add Kinect features.

It's a good change, yes, but it's also clear that it's just a reactionary change that they didn't really want to go through with.  I'm not sure they should be praised all that heavily for that.

It's kind of the same thing with some of the other features.  Their mistake wasn't having those features, it was in attempting to force consumers down a certain path by getting rid of features they were familiar with.  They could have accomplished the same thing in a much less heavy-handed way, as we're already headed in that direction.  Leading an animal is a hell of a lot easier than pushing one.

the console is pretty much what it should of been in the first place

Every time I saw a new change in Xbone I guess the preorders sales are really pissing off MS Execs... the new order now is do what the consumer wants.

I like that way.

Xbone is tuning into a console now... maybe a great one.

So, to quell the fears of the few, they have changed the requirement to plug it in. Did anything just change? No, but for the simple minded it is now OK to buy the XBone. If anyone was not going to buy the XBone because of the Kinect, what has changed now? You still pay for it. The only person that this impacts are the ones that were afraid of the NSA concept. Most of those people own laptops/tablets/smartphones/standard cell phones/tvs that the NSA can watch and or listen to you on already. So they have gained nothing. If they start selling XBone without the Kinect, then you will have atleast gained something($$$ in your pocket). I myself want to have the features related to it, as i am going to use it as an entertainment hub.

They better not start selling it apart since Kinect is what differienciate XBone from PS4. If you don't like Kinect just don't buy an XBone why must everything be the same? What are you guys going to complain about now?

Just a clarification.

Kinect is required to be plugged in. You can turn it off, it is not necessary to be on for the console to function. However it still operations for certain functions (IR Blaster) even when turned off.

Nothing has changed.  Microsoft had said from the day of the reveal that you could shut-off Kinect.  Kinect must still be connected.  However, you can turn it off in the console settings.  The reason it must be still connected is that if you insert a game that requires it, it'll ask if you want to enable turn Kinect on.