The Xbox One, endured a ton of criticism from gamers in the wake of its announcement this past May. Among DRM and the used games debacle, the disappointment over the bundling of Kinect with the system. Analyst Michael Pachter believes that Microsoft will remove Kinect from the system as a required peripheral sooner rather than later.
“Kinect was initially included with every Xbox One due to Microsoft’s belief that video and voice recognition were essential for its multimedia features. Other than Skype, there are few functions that Kinect actually performs that could not be accomplished relatively easily through SmartGlass,” Mr. Pachter explained, “I think Microsoft will see little support for Kinect-enabled games in 2014, and may reconsider requiring each Xbox One owner to buy Kinect.”
Pachter attributed this prediction to the departures of Don Mattrick and Steve Ballmer from Microsoft, along with the potential $100 savings per console if the peripheral were to be removed.
