Starting in June, the Xbox One will be available without the Kinect, enabling Microsoft to sell the console at a cheaper price point. It’s a controversial move that many were hoping Microsoft would eventually make — which also means it’s a move that plenty of people have opinions on.
Overall, reactions mostly fall in a few camps: snark, disappointment (all the Kinect believers are coming out of the woodwork) and curiosity over what a Kinect-free console means for the future of the console after Microsoft initially made such a big deal about how it was going to be mandatory. A few folks even seem straight up angry or wronged, but they’re a minority, as far as I can tell.
Let’s take a look at what people around the web are saying about the Kinect news, shall we?
Good work, everyone. Now let’s REALLY mess around with them and demand they make Kinect mandatory again #BringBackKinect #Kinect4Life
— Dan Marshall (@danthat) May 13, 2014
It was never about digging up Atari carts–Microsoft just needed space for their own plastic albatross. Kinect the dots, sheeple!
— Andrew Vestal (@avestal) May 13, 2014
how cool would it be to bring in your kinect to @GameStop for a 100 dollar instore credit for some new games. business, synergy make it so!
— #LOVE2014 (@F1sT) May 13, 2014
Now that Xbone has dropped the stupid Kinect, I may consider getting that console if its games are interesting.
— Warm Coke (@Isuimanim) May 13, 2014
As someone who sees value in the Kinect long-term, there was no compelling 1st-year case made with software explaining the $499 price
— Adam Sessler (@AdamSessler) May 13, 2014
Kinectless Xbox one?….. Isn’t the point of having the Xbox one for the Kinect and shit? >.<
— JKG ♥ RAG (@TheFlirtXO) May 13, 2014
Hold tight, my little Milo, soon Kinect will be with you too and you can both finally rest in peace together.
— petermolydeux (@PeterMolydeux) May 13, 2014
apparently the new batmobile doesn’t come with kinect
— Blair (@mynameisblair) May 13, 2014
Can’t wait to see what Microsoft unannounces at E3 this year
— Jason Schreier (@jasonschreier) May 13, 2014
MS does exactly what everyone asks, and people still shit on them for dumping Kinect…even though no one wanted it in the first place.
— Ian (@TheGodofRawr) May 13, 2014
The Kinect does not need the things that Microsoft makes. It needs to embrace the weird bullshit that made the Oculus an odd gaming darling.
— Chris Person (@Papapishu) May 13, 2014
Wow all the kinect games in development seem kind of screwed over
— Chris ‘Pat Lee’ Ho (@Vangelus) May 13, 2014
Please back @AmplitudeGame on kickstarter. We at @Harmonix could use a happy boost today. http://t.co/r5xh3E8kZR
— johntdrake (@johntdrake) May 13, 2014
Now that we have a Kinect-less Xbox One, I wonder if its sales performance will influence Nintendo in to having a Gamepad-less Wii U option.
— Georgie BoysAXE (@GeorgieBoysAXE) May 13, 2014
I use the Kinect voice stuff every day. I really wouldn’t want an #XboxOne without it.
— Joshua Doan (@joshuadoan) May 13, 2014
*throws Kinect in the trash* *turns around and finds Kinect camera back on the TV stand where it was before* *Kinect slowly turns and nods*
— Alex Navarro (@alex_navarro) May 13, 2014
Isn’t removing the Kinect kind of wrong? Wasn’t the console designed around it?
— Shane Luis (@RerezTV) May 13, 2014
I just wonder how much of the system’s architecture has been built around stuff like TV and Kinect. Time will tell.
— Matt Lees (@Jam_sponge) May 13, 2014
With the news of a Kinect-less Xbox One, I drew this to mark the occasion. pic.twitter.com/R9CNmAIqPT
— Ｚａｙｎｅ (@dedhedzed) May 13, 2014
Xbox One without Kinect will not respond to voice commands, as opposed to with Kinect when it only usually didn’t respond to voice commands
— CEO Kaz Hirai (@KazHiraiCEO) May 13, 2014
congratulations to videogame stores, now you’re gonna get a whole new seperate pile of xbones you can’t sell
— A Burly Hedgehog (@PrototypeCube) May 13, 2014
Twitter Nov 2013: “Why do they force me to buy Kinect?! Fail!” Twitter today: “Xbox One without Kinect?! Fail!”
— Jeff Cannata (@jeffcannata) May 13, 2014
*bursts into meeting room door, stumbles into standing position, adjusts tie* THE XBOX JUST GOT DISKINECTED
— Julian Williams (@theMirai) May 13, 2014
Just passed a dude on Polk Street with his dick just hanging out of his pants. Folks are dealing with this Xbox news in some strange ways.
— Marty Sliva (@McBiggitty) May 13, 2014
I’m willing to bet that Microsoft will unveil a new UI for the Xbox One at E3 since it’s horrible without Kinect. Hence the June 9th release
— Nick McCandless (@NickMcCandless) May 13, 2014
I still think Kinect was a really great idea somewhere down the line and maybe in an alt.universe there’s cool people making cool stuff.
— Rob (@retroremakes) May 13, 2014
Well then. We WERE interested in doing a Kinect game.
— Phil Tibitoski (@PTibz) May 13, 2014
MS also just shafted those of us with gamertags designed to make people turn off their machines mid game. RIP “eXbox Sigh Now”
— Justin Kranzl (@Kranzl) May 13, 2014
(He’s talking about people like this.)
I wonder if Microsoft will also finally bring auto sign-in on Xbox One cause you can’t do that unless you use Kinect
— Wario64 (@Wario64) May 13, 2014
Xbox One without Kinect. Thank God. Finally!
— Charles Dalton (@FilmCharles) May 13, 2014
Kinect is a nice gimmick but that’s it. People want to play games at the end of the day. Voice commands and stuff like that are superfluous.
— Tony Polanco (@Romudeth) May 13, 2014
Everyone gloating about the Kinect thing ought to play Fantasia, the most interesting AAA game I’ve played this year.
— Ste Curran (@steishere) May 13, 2014
I still love my kinect #xboxfitness
— Wackybar (@Wackybar) May 13, 2014
Microsoft: Where things are absolutely, positively required & are fundamental to your enjoyment of their services until they’re suddenly not
— Chris Franklin (@Campster) May 13, 2014
You’re being pretty churlish if you’re digging at MS for an about-face on Kinect. The market spoke and they responded.
— Justin Kranzl (@Kranzl) May 13, 2014
The only E3 promise left for Microsoft to backpedal on now is the actual existence of the Xbox One.
— mAtt (@toythatkills) May 13, 2014
Funny how the most sought after accessory for the PS4 is the camera that nobody is supposed to want.
— Gus Mastrapa (@Triphibian) May 13, 2014
Elsewhere
Over at neoGAF, people seemed to generally be happy with the news:
And we can’t forget about YouTube:
What about you, how did you react to the Kinect-free Xbox news?
Comments
11 responses to “The Internet Reacts To Kinect-Free Xbox One”
I keep getting misled by the headlines, thinking that the Internet has somehow become sentient and is now reacting to matters related to the human world, thus instilling some kind of anxiety in me about a Skynet-esque future.
Instead, it’s this….. -_-
On May 14th at 1:20pm, the Internet become self aware and launched U MAD BRO’s against every major city.
So… much… snark…
Stumbling across a snarky comment every now and then is bad enough. This article is a shot of concentrated snark juice.
Ha that first Reddit exchange is pretty funny! The 2nd Reddit post makes does make me question my beloved Xbone overlords.
Seriously… the best thing for kinect would have enabling the ‘every xbox is a dev kit’ option.
As soon as the homebrew / indie community could start building and publishing games for it… we would have found its killer app.
No more Youtube troll videos of people with Kinect-prodding names getting people to sign out. That is the greatest loss of all.
Just on hiatus until they enable voice control using the regular headset instead of Kinect.
E3 and the reveal showed that MS makes poor decisions. The subsequent 180s, despite assertions that it needed to function that way, showed the MS are pathological liars.
When the PS3 released with its “inconvenient” features (cell making it complicated, blu-ray making it expensive) at least Sony had the balls to stick to their vision (which proved to be the right call in the end.
MS has at least come to a point where I’m only not buying an XB1 for ethical reasons, not ethical and technical reasons.
Blu-Ray maybe but how was Cell Processor the right call in the end – all that happened was devs learned how to use it properly sometime around 2010-11.
Molydeux is the best account on the whole damn network.