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Forums - Microsoft - Why OG XB1 was so dang big/expensive

  So, I recently bought an XB1s for a 4k bluray player.  I read online that MS would give you a free adapter for the Kinect for original XB1 owners if you contacted them.  At the time I wondered why they didn't include the jack for the Kinect on the XB1s, but guessed it was to distance themselves from the Kinect.  A week goes by and the Kinect adapter shows up.  I was amazed at the size and weight of the box.  It was large and heavy for an adapter.  I opened up the box and found that the adapter (converting from proprietary Kinect Jack to USB)itself was one device that was quite large and the powers supply for the adapter was about the size of a smaller laptop power supply.

https://www.amazon.com/Xbox-Kinect-Adapter-One-Windows-10/dp/B01GVE4YB4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476580771&sr=8-1&keywords=kinect+xbox+one+adapter

Clearly, we all knew that the Kinect was adding some cost to the original XB1.  I would have never guessed how much extra space the internal adapter and whatever else that was dedicated to the Kinect needed.  I now know why the original XB1 power supply was so damn BIG and EXTERNAL.  Literally, the Kinect single handedly changed the whole design of the XB1.  I myself have always liked the Kinect and didn't mind an extra $50 or so of cost to get the Kinect features.   But, the shear size/cost related to the kinect was much bigger than I ever really guessed.  I always just looked at the Kinect 2.0 itself and thought that was the extent of its cost and impact.  

Up until today, I never really agreed that the Kinect itself hurt the XB1 sales that much.  Now, more than ever it is obvious that the day they decided to add Kinect to the XB1, they literally lost MS BILLIONS in costs and years of mindshare and it even impacted their long term vision of windows 10 integration and probably impacted the XB1s overall gaming power.  At some point, one person had to be the final yes/no guy on the inclusion of the Kinect(Mattrick?).  Whoever it was, was a complete idiot.



It is near the end of the end....

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It is near the end of the end....

The Kinect probably added $100 to the OG xbox which is why it was $500. I'm not sure about weight tho. We would need to get the weight of the OG Xbox and Kinect adapter. Subtract it and compare it to the Xbox one S.



Mattrick gets all the blame from most but this had to be something the top people approved of, at the very least. Possibly they even mandated some of the alternate revenue streams, like the TV emphasis. We might never know.



pokoko said:
Mattrick gets all the blame from most but this had to be something the top people approved of, at the very least. Possibly they even mandated some of the alternate revenue streams, like the TV emphasis. We might never know.

I agree he probably wasn't the only decision maker involved.  The real problem with trying to push blame any higher up is that none of those people would have ever really had a conversation about the impacts to system performance(assuming MS really knew themselves until it was too late) and overall looks and costs.  I would think that it was presented as "we can have box A that is vanilla and costs us $420 each or Box B that does all of these amazing things with Kinect and cost us $490".  

The pitch would have been that "box B has a market of 50% of the population and box A only has 30%.  So, even if we lose 15-25% of the buyers that will only buy box A, we still have way more buyers with box B.  Not to mention that box B buyers will now enter our ecosystem and buy movies and services that will make us more $$$ per box sold by 2-3 times!!!"

Most people discount the Kinect now, as it turned out to be a little late to the market doing what it does.  Had it come 2 years earlier, it would have been an easier sell as it would have been alone in the market for what it did.  Now of course, it is funny that just about anythin in your home can be bought with voice recognition.  Just look at the Amazon Alexa/echos and the google systems, and the apple one that is coming soon to.  



It is near the end of the end....