The playing field just gets a little more level with each MS reversal. Now we dont have to worry about some sweaty mouthbreathing marketing company drone remotely activating the kinect just to see what kind of soda is in the room. For $500 US, you can get an Xbox One with a kinect (that will likely never leave the box for most people), or you can get a PS4 with a Vita handheld. AWWW Dammit...does MS seriously have a fully staffed dept of FAIL?
That may well be the reason he's out. MS brass cant be happy with a $700 million data mining center with virtually nothing to do if they are forced to 180 on the kinect and allow it to be disconnected.
Destiny is Activision's strategic replacement for COD...duh! The fad is wearing off, yearly sequel fatigue is setting in..COD is just over the crest of the hill and heading for its death spiral. Activisions profit-wrining mechanism eventually leaves a franchise a dried out husk, just part of the natural life cycle there. What will be interesting to watch is how the Bungie-Activision dynamic plays out. Bungie got (at least as far is known publicly) a fairly iron-clad structure of independence. Bungie at this point, has sufficient power to withstand a break-up attempt as was done to IW, so it will likely be very hard to muscle the studio into re-tread sequels, rushed releases and game design-by-focus-group. Thats going to be the story to watch.
MS is just shifting its strategy to take advantage of new revenue streams. Console sales (probably break even or slight loss), game licensing fees (only a small percentage per unit) and XBL subscriptions (high overheard) arent going to cut it for feeding the need of quarter over quarter profit increases. They are just following the Facebook model, just taking it to an order of magnitude greater. $700 million is a tiny investment compared to how much ad agencies and large conglomerates will pay for either direct access or data summaries from kinect recordings. The money isnt in goods or services anymore, its in the large scale collecting and selling of customers private data.
@Superzone Youre right, sort of. No MS did not listen to the internet rage...they didnt listen to the consumers directly. But the consumers did not like their product, and flocked to a competitor. MS changed the policy to chase after the customers they were loosing. Internet rage does not communicate directly to the corporations, but it does communicate to other consumers. And consumers forget their greatest power sometimes...its very easy to punish companies you disagree with by depriving them of your wallet. So, no MS didnt directly listen to its customers (weeks of snarky arrogance shows that), but they cant ignore the reasons that their customers spend money on their competitors.
And there are some tricks...just before a new release, either mail back a game the Friday before, or do a keep it order on a game the day before release. I get games day of release at least 75% of the time this way. Last game I got that way was Bioshock Inifinite. Put in a keep it order on Sunday, game shipped on Monday, had it in my mailbox Tues afternoon. Keep it order saved me $25 off list for a brand new disc and I only had to wait a day or two for the case to arrive.
Thats the next thing that MS has to backtrack on if they are going to compete. And honestly, its not the traditional gaming comsumers that kinect is really going to drive away. With the DRM crap gone, all MS has to do to woo the traditional gamer back is offer enough games quality...the kinect will largely be forgotten. Where kinect is going to be the marketing downfall, is in the casual market they are trying to tap into. How long do you think it will take for the popular press to pick up on the "all seeing eye" concept? How many parents will allow an Xbox (d)One in their home after Chris Hanson does a couple of stories about it? I'm sure they have a whole lot of preliminary agreements with marketing companies promising to pay big bucks for the data, and I'm sure there were big investments in data centers to sift and filter that data, but they are going to have to look at the big picture and realize its not going to be worth the damage to their brand.
Government applications are slim to none for revenue generation....thats not what the kinect 2.0 is for. Its a data mining machine. Marketing firms will pay BILLIONS for the opportunity to look into people's homes and find out what soda they drink, or what the color of the bedding is, or how many times they have sex each week....the uses are endless to marketers. And think of who will be looking at your kinect data....not some dour military man looking for terrorists, it will be some entry level, minimum wage guy off the street watching kinect feeds to count how many pop cans they see. You really trust their ability to only use your data for the "proper" reasons?
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