Sony's Favorite Gadget Is Kinect

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "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.""

Re:Social

[Sockatume]

You've completely missed the indie game movement, then. Gaming has never been so intellectually active.

Re:It's the ads

[Talderas]

Um. What the fuck are you talking about? If you have a game disk in the PS3 when you boot it up, the system will focus on the game disk option. If you boot the PS3 without a disk, it focused on the PS store and network options. If you put a game disk in, the menu will focus on the game sub menu and auto-load the game.

Re:Social

[Chris Mattern]

Please, point me to these allegedly "intellectually active" indie games

Papers Please
Thomas Was Alone
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
Journey
Minecraft

There's lots more, but that'll do for starters.

Science disagrees.

[Anonymous Coward]

Says you.

"Recent research conducted by independent investigators concerning the relationship between crime and narcotic (primarily heroin) addiction has revealed a remarkable degree of consistency of findings across studies. The major conclusion supported by the majority of these studies is that narcotic addicts commit a vast amount of crime and that much of this is directly related to the need to purchase drugs. A large proportion of the crimes committed does not consist merely of drug sales or possession, but involves other criminal behaviors including serious crimes. The strongest evidence of a causal relationship between narcotic drug use and crime is derived from longitudinal studies in which the amount of crime committed during periods of active addiction far exceeds that committed during periods of nonaddiction."

http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abstract/1985/02000/The_Criminality_of_Narcotic_Addicts.6.aspx