When Microsoft announced the Xbox One last year, it was quite a controversial launch. There were features about the console that felt limiting, and there was also its price which at $499 made it a harder pill to swallow, at least compared to the PlayStation 4 which was priced $100 cheaper.
Microsoft justified this by claiming that the Xbox One comes bundled with the Kinect, which is why it costs more, which we reckon seemed fair enough. However less than a year later, Microsoft made another controversial decision by removing the Kinect, thus making it cheaper for gamers.
However in an interview with Develop, the Xbox’s designer, Carl Ledbetter, revealed that perhaps the issue of the Kinect might not have been such a big deal because at one point in time, Microsoft had actually considered integrating the Kinect into the console itself. According to Ledbetter, the reason Microsoft decided against that was simply because of aesthetic reasons.
According to him, “We actually built models of that. We pushed ourselves, can we put it all in one? Is that going to work? And the technology just isn’t there yet. As soon as you have something much bigger than the Kinect sensor people don’t want to put it by the TV, it’s too big.” Ledbetter goes on to talk about the design process of the Kinect, and also why Microsoft made the choices that they did.
It’s an interesting prospect to have the Kinect integrated into the console, although like Ledbetter points out, it might have gotten a bit too big and unwieldy for the living room, which might have ultimately put gamers off from purchasing the console, but what say you? Would an integrated Kinect be of interest to you?