Gary Marshall writes that.Microsoft's marvelous motion-sensing device is doing really good work for Sony, helping the PS4 outsell the Xbox One in the US and rocketing it to the top of the world's console sales charts. With the Xbox One $100 more expensive than the PlayStation 4,
the Kinect is the explanation for the huge difference in price between
the rival platforms says Marshall. "That kind of money makes a huge
difference, and I wonder: if Microsoft had kept the Kinect as an
optional add-on, which we all know it should be, would the Xbox One be
much more attractive?" Ben Kuchera describes the peripheral as one of
the most hated pieces of equipment in current use. "The system is still
new, but every Xbox One owner now has a peripheral that has little
reason to exist, aids their gaming in very few real ways and costs them a
significant amount of money." The common defense of the Kinect is that
developers wouldn't support it unless it was forced on consumers but
according to Kuchera pushing a product on the public with the hope that
it will be useful once we have it is a cruel inversion of how product
adoption should be handled. "The forced pack-in proves something we
already knew at the beginning of this generation: Almost no one would want to buy the Kinect separately if they were given the choice," writes Kuchera. "It's time to make the Kinect a peripheral, not a pack-in.
