“Five million people around the world have bought an Xbox One so far and Microsoft has a message for you: SUCKERS!” Gordon Kelly reports for Forbes.
“Of course this wasn’t in the official announcement that Microsoft will sell a $399 version of the Xbox One without Kinect from 9 June, but it should be. It told existing owners the $100 premium they had paid to buy an Xbox One over a PlayStation 4 was pointless,” Kelly reports. “That the much touted technology responsible for the higher price and behind promises of both a gaming and entertainment revolution wasn’t really integral after all. Dear existing owners, we hope you’re happy to have paid for a more expensive, underpowered PS4 alternative.”
“Sony had pulled out a sizeable early sales lead: 7 million sold to 5 million (shipped) after six months,” Kelly reports. “In a stroke Microsoft has made fools of its earliest (and most virulent) supporters, proved it cannot be trusted and set back one of technology’s most impressive advances – not just for the Xbox One versus PS4 – but for all Microsoft devices in their larger battle with Apple and Google for the living room. And all for short term gain.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Nadella T. Clown.
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Say goodbye to Microsoft – April 11, 2014
Not another clown!? It’s like a four-ring circus over there.
Of course, the advantage is that they all can take one car to work in the morning…
No, no; still at three rings: Gates, Ballmer, Nadella.
Microsoft is a one-Time salesman!
It would seem that for $100, you get voice commands, visual ID, always on experience, etc.
Certainly there is $100 or more in technology built into the Kinect.
This is an abandonment of a base standard Microsoft had intended for the Xbox One, and made it the same as the 360.
This isn’t as bad as the author writes, but it means a change for developers. It kinda sucks. Early adopters are not “suckers” in that Microsoft didn’t intend to short change them, they simply are trying to react to the market that didn’t work as they had hoped. They sat down in a meeting and hammered out how to fix the problem.
It might be too little too late.
Don’t forget the free Kin that comes with the new, Kinect-less Xbox One!
Kin? Aren’t those hanging out with Atari ET cartridges?
It is in Microsoft’s DNA . Nothing new.
Do you remember prior to the first system with Kinect how Microsoft tried to sell us on misleading demonstrations of its science fiction capabilities. Years later and still no real reflection of all those promises has materialised. Nothing changes with Microsoft all total fluff.
I wonder if any of it had to do with Apple buying the company behind the Kinnect technology.
PrimeSense, right? Doubtful: Microsoft had already moved on from their technology for Kinect. The Kinect they use now is totally different from the first-generation one.
What’s this article going on about? Many video game consoles drop in price $100 months after they go on sale. Anyone who buys any brand new technology should know they are probably paying a premium to be among the first people to have it.
There’s plenty of real reasons to diss Microsoft’s XBox One, but this article’s just too lazy to find one.
What?
It’s not a price drop – they’re not including one of the “features” they touted the Xbox One as everything you needed to make it your living room “hub”.
Well, I *do* remember paying a lot of extra money for my 1st iPhone, only to see the price drop a few months later. Sometimes, a price drop is what it takes to make a product sell better.
In that case Apple was not offering a crippled iPhone .
That was a particularly Bleeding Edge moment that didn’t make Apple look very good.
These days we have sham competitors like Amazon who not only give away alternative products, they lose money on the deal, just to BUY MARKET SHARE. Microsoft has pulled the same stunt with the Xbox series.
Who do I respect more? Apple or Amazon or Microsoft? Well DUH.
To me, Microsoft is compromising on much of their vision just to be able to better compete with Sony.
On one side, I commend them on quickly adapting to correct mistakes and better compete. On the other side, they incorrectly read the market and have nothing to make the public buy on their original vision.
I agree with others that this article is really reaching. Those “suckers” aren’t the ones who would’ve otherwise wanted the Kinect. They got exactly what they wanted. I’d imagine that’s a good chunk of the early adopters right there.
And this doesn’t seem like a move by Microsoft that was short sighted in terms of a quick buck, but rather they wanted to build a base of Kinect owners so that developers would build support for it.
Most of the people I know on the Xbox side are upset not because they were suckered into buying the Kinect, but rather that Microsoft backed on the Kinect being required, and now has backed off on the Kinect being bundled. They’re upset because there may be less developer support for the Kinect.
For those that didn’t care about Kinect… well the only ones I know were already on or going to PlayStation.
I purchased mine on day one and have not regretted it. The whole reason I purchased it was for the kinetic, voice commands, gestures hdmi pass thru and of course to play games. Yea I know the ps4 is slightly more powerful but for me the xbox is the better machine for me. I’m not angry the they are selling a kinect less xbox. Now all them paranoid people who think the NSA wants to watch them sitting in their underwear with their Doritos stained tee shirts playing video games might buy one now.
MDN refers to ‘Nadella T. Clown.’
As a linguist, I have to wonder about the etymological roots of that first name. Could it be:
NADA – ‘nothing’ (Spanish)
-ELL – an English measure of length
Thus , ‘Nadella’ will be with us for ‘no length of time at all’, perhaps?
Reminds me of the time Apple released the iPad 4 a mere months after all those SUCKERS bought an iPad 3.