Hate him or love to hate him, but whenever industry analyst Michael Pachter opens his mouth he says something interesting – even if you don’t necessarily agree with it. I’ve a pretty good feeling many of you will agree with him this time though. He’s said that Kinect is “irrelevant.”
Speaking in the latest episode of Gametrailers’ Bonus Round, Pachter said that Kinect is not the game changer Microsoft had hoped. He says that Kinect was Don “The Jacket” Mattrick’s favourite bit of kit, and now that he’s no longer the boss, it’ll no longer be as prevalent a feature. In truth, it’s really just a fancy, expensive Skype camera.
“Kinect was Don Mattrick’s favorite child. He believed in it, he thought it was gonna change the world. He believed it a mechanism to cross sell skype and to cross sell cable access and doing other things.
I think that as Microsoft developed Skype, they recognized how fast smartphones and tablets have been adopted and I think the overlap of Xbox One households and smartphones and tablets households is probably a hundred percent. I think that Kinect has become almost irrelevant.
I think Skype is a really cool app, but FaceTime works. you don’t really need that Skype in your living room… It’s better if everybody is on the couch, but FaceTime works.
I think the voice command is really cool, but you can use your tablet. The answer is: Don isn’t there anymore. You have a new boss over the Xbox division, who has no skin in the Kinect game, so… Sure they’re gonna unbundle. Not in 2014. They will not change the SKU that dramatically in the first full year. It’s a 2015 event.”
So yes, he thinks that Microsoft will remove Kinect from the Xbox One, unbundling it in 2015, offering a cheaper, more palatable Xbox One. Will that really make much of a difference? Pachter doesn’t think so. He thinks Sony’s pretty on to its new PS2, which dominated the consoles space two generations back.
Just the way they introduced the 4 GB Xbox after a couple years, they’ll bring one out and it’ll be something that’ll look a little dumbed down… I think they’ll actually pick the core model and put a 2 TB hard drive in it, and then the dumbed down one will have a 500 GB hard drive, and it’ll have no Kinect, and it’ll be 400 bucks. That’s the easiest way to do the price cut. The problem is that if by spring ’15 they cut the price to $400, Sony goes 349 for ours! Sony right now is in a position to stay ahead of them, and this is what happened with the PS2. PS2 kept taking share by cutting price.
I think this is a price game. I think unbundling Kinect is the smartest way to get competitive right away.
Once again, I’ll say that I’d certainly be much more keen on an Xbox One that wasn’t bundled with a silly motion-sensing peripheral I care absolutely nothing for. With Kinect hard-baked in to the Xbox One’s triad of operating systems, is extricating Kinect even possible?
Last Updated: March 10, 2014
Spathi
March 10, 2014 at 10:03
“even if you don;t n3ec4essarily agree with it.” – Did you use Kinect’s voice recognition to type this sentence Geoff?
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 10, 2014 at 10:05
lol. I was just going to ask if he was using gesture-based typing.
Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim
March 10, 2014 at 10:11
🙂
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 10, 2014 at 10:07
Ouch. Those are comments MS will not be happy to hear. I don’t know if they’ve got the guts to remove the Kinect. They’d have to eat serious humble pie if they did that because they’d essentially be admitting to a gigantic miscalculation.
oVg PAYNE
March 10, 2014 at 10:25
Oh they have the guts to do anything they like. Remember how they screwed the 360 owners who spent $200 on the external HD DVD drive? back when they said Blu-Ray was a fad.
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3722
Alien Emperor Trevor
March 10, 2014 at 10:34
What’s HD-DVD? Is that like Betamax? 😉
HvR
March 10, 2014 at 10:59
If you mix Betamas, LaserDisc, Video2000 you get HD-DVD.
Only CED disc beats HD-DVD.
RinceThis
March 10, 2014 at 10:11
Kinect FAIL! HAHAHAHAH! http://www1.loquefaltaba.com/~sico/fotos/gifs/1295259353_guy-kicks-cat-while-playing-kinect.gif
oVg PAYNE
March 10, 2014 at 10:23
bwahahaha
ToshZA
March 10, 2014 at 11:27
hahahahaha
derp
March 10, 2014 at 10:11
Comparing FaceTime to Skype is stupid.
FaceTime is only for Apple users whereas Skype works on just about every platform there is.
HvR
March 10, 2014 at 10:46
I think he was just using it as one example since the Ipad is the most popular tablet in the main markets, his main point that in the main markets of the US and EU you will not find a household that owns Xbox One that does not own a tablet with a video call application that fulfill in all their needs.
Umar Praise The Golden Sun
March 10, 2014 at 10:15
Watched this episode this morning. What exactly is so appealing about having this mandatory device … There are NO worthwhile games and it’s more for interactivity outside of games…..It’s like when you spent so much effort on something you have to see it through even though it is irrelevant …Also poor Garnet Lee, Pachter talks too much
FoxOneZA
March 10, 2014 at 10:18
#KINECTISCRAPGATE
JustAnotherGamer
March 10, 2014 at 10:24
Let it be known henceforth that “Kinect” is synonymous with the word “FAILURE”
JustAnotherGamer
March 10, 2014 at 10:33
Won’t make a difference to me though, Xone is selling like the WiiU in Europe and the rest of the world, so it’s almost dead in the water. Dead dead dead dead….
iAmWeasel
March 10, 2014 at 10:46
“whenever industry analyst Michael Pachter he says something interesting”… grammar fail 😉
Blackhawk
March 10, 2014 at 12:55
“Xbox One’s triage of operating systems” – I think you meant “triad” here…
Exalted Overlord Geoffrey Tim
March 10, 2014 at 13:13
indeed. Thanks!
Joe Black
March 10, 2014 at 13:06
Well it was a bit like putting an 18 year old in Grade 1 and hoping he makes friends with everybody. This is not how you do things.
Jody A Morgan
March 10, 2014 at 15:30
I am a bit confused on the motivation behind this. 2x’s Geoff you mention FaceTime. And though I agree with the fact that FaceTimedoes what it does it is not all inclusive. Also if Kinect is irrelevant why did Apple by the company that is the core tech to the Kinect? I think there is more to this than what is on the surface. (No pun intended with the “surface” reference either.)
Jim Lenoir (Banana Jim)
March 10, 2014 at 15:36
I remember when the XBox360 was a boss, and then it took a Kinect to the knee. :/
CTO_Dude
March 10, 2014 at 17:14
I’m confused… can the billions of Windows users have access to FaceTime?