Microsoft has set themselves up for a huge success come this June. With the Xbox One reaching parity price with the Playstation 4, all they need is another software push to really drive home how serious they are about games.
I don’t plan on really diving into why taking the Kinect out of the box is an excellent decision, I think Polygon’s Ben Kuchera from nails it, but I will say that, as I’ve said before, keeping the momentum from this moment to after E3 is absolutely critical. The cheaper Xbox One without the Kinect launches on the day of their E3 press conference, and that is when all eyes will be on them. Giving the consumer reasons to pick up their system will need to be front and center at their conference.
Last year, Microsoft unveiled and showed off an incredible list of games, but the big falter was after E3, Microsoft had to almost immediately fall on the defensive, where Sony stuck to their initial plan and was able to essentially kick them when they were down. This killed the momentum of excellent software and capabilities behind the Xbox One, and all anyone wanted to talk about was their policy change.
This doesn’t mean Microsoft is out of the woods yet. Developers are still hitting a wall when it comes to the development tools on Xbox One, and until there is more parity in the games on Xbox One in comparison to their PS4 counterparts, it’ll be an uphill battle. When the difference in resolution and framerate between PS4 and Xbox One versions of games are still top-tier news stories, there is a problem.
What does Microsoft do now? They continue to make the Xbox One sound like a product people want to buy with plenty to give gamers and tech-enthusiasts alike. Look at it this way: if Microsoft is putting this news out there a month before their actual E3 press conference, it probably means they have a lot to discuss on June 9th that won’t fit in with a shift in gears like this. Hopefully it’s software, but we’ll know on June 9th one way or the other.
What do you think of this huge announcement? Let me know on Twitter @ALFighter27.
