Microsoft may have done away with requiring the Kinect to be always on with the next-gen Xbox One, but don't think that means the company will be releasing a cheaper version of the system without Kinect.
When Microsoft announced its latest policy switch, which would let players could turn off the Kinect on their Xbox Ones; hopes were high that a Kinect-less console was possibly on the way. However, it seems as though Microsoft has no intention of making this a possibility.
Microsoft's own director of programming and all around company spokesman Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb popped up over on a Reddit thread discussing the removal of the Kinect requirement. When a user posed the question of a Kinect-less consoles, Hyrb responded, "We have no plans for that. We are 100 per cent all in on Kinect."
Hyrb's denial of a Kinect-less Xbox One echoes head of planning for Kinect and Xbox One Albert Penello's post on NeoGAF, where he said the company "still believes" in Kinect: "The team feels strongly about Kinect, and I hope we're able to prove that when you use it. We also have a ton of privacy settings to allow people to turn off the camera, or microphones, or put it in a state just for 'Xbox On' and IR blasting - there will be a lot of user control for that. The thing we all understood, and hence this change, is that there are some scenarios where people just may not be comfortable...There is no "gotcha", but obviously, if there is a game that REQUIRES Kinect (like Rivals), or something where Kinect IS the experience (like Skype), those won't work. That said, for people who have privacy concerns there are user control settings, which we believe are great."
Xbox Corporate Vice President Marc Whitten revealed the Kinect change of heart during an "Ask Microsoft Anything" Q&A via IGN, saying that players "have the ability to completely turn the sensor off in your settings. When in this mode, the sensor is not collecting any information. Any functionality that relies on voice, video, gesture or more won't work. We still support using it for IR blasting in this mode. You can turn the sensor back on at any time through settings, and if you enter into a required Kinect experience (like Kinect Sports Rivals for instance), you'll get a message asking if you want to turn the sensor back on in order to continue."
