A few developers have weighed in on the Xbox One reveal, with many citing confusion over why we have to have Kinect 2 enabled all the time, and why the main focus was on the television aspect of the console – and not the games.
Speaking with Eurogamer, Just Add Water boss Stewart Gilray said he’s a bit confused over the all-in-one aspect when users still have to have a secondary device attached.
“Microsoft is attempting to be the one device in the living room, but at the same time as doing that you have to have a secondary device, like a TiVo, to HDMI into the Xbox One to be able to use the TV side of it, which to me defeats the entire purpose,” he said. “It’s very confusing.
“The only real positive for always-on is the concept of instant booting. You come into your room and just say ‘on’, and on you go. But I can do it already on the PS3 and Xbox 360. You just press the button on the controllers. I personally don’t see what an always-on system will do for us, other than background downloading when you’re not around, which will be a massive plus.
“I wonder if bundling Kinect with it and the fact it’s always-on is going to put a lot of people off. They’re saying, even if the system is turned off or on stand-by, you come into your living room and say, ‘Xbox On’, so Kinect is going to be watching all the time. How many people will that put off? It’s not something that sits well with me, frankly.”
Former People Can Fly developer Adrian Chmielarz, said he’s not too keen on waving his arms in front of the TV or using Skype when playing a game.
“I don’t want to talk to my TV, I don’t want to wave my hands in front of my TV, and I don’t want to Skype with a friend when I’m engaged in a game,” he said. “That’s not to say that Kinect 2.0 is useless (I’m curious about that heartbeat thing, for one), but for now I don’t see it as anything too exciting.
“It’s very hard for me to stay objective here. For example, with all due respect to Mr. Spielberg, a Halo TV series is not the reason for me to buy a $400 (or whatever) box. I got way more excited when I saw Jonathan Blow on the PS4 stage. Not because of his game, but because of the message that Sony was sending this way.
“But look, I could go on forever about this or that feature and about this or that element of the ecosystem. At the end of the day I think the problem is not necessarily with the hardware or features, but with the unveil strategy itself. It’s fine to start with the non-gaming stuff, then please gamers at E3, but I wish Microsoft was more clear and vocal about it and set the expectations right.
“Because we all wanted to see the future of gaming, and we got almost none of that, and what we got were weak pre-rendered movies that looked worse than some of the games I have on my PC right now, or a dog and fish AI. I have no reason to prefer any console over the other, hell, I want them both to succeed – more platforms for our games, yay! But, to be honest, I don’t think anyone from Sony lost any sleep.”
Other developers provided their two-cents as well. Go have a read through the link.
Microsoft has promised that its E3 press conference will be all about the games, and promises 90 minutes of nothing but. The firm also has 15 Xbox One exclusives in the works and eight are entirely new IPs.
Thanks, Djoenz.
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