Microsoft has pulled another u-turn, this time regarding the Kinect that will come bundled with every Xbox One.
Some gamers were delighted to have the camera included as standard, while others didn't much care for its inclusion. There were even those that had security concerns regarding the equipment, and it's for that group that Microsoft has revised their plans for Kinect.
Speaking to IGN, chief platform architect Marc Whitten said: "You 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."
Whitten continued: "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."
After the story was published, Microsoft PR Albert Penello posted the following statement on Neogaf:
We still believe in Kinect. We aren't interested in splitting the development base. The more demos I've seen, the more I've used it - the more impressed I am. 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. We wanted people to be 100% comfortable, so we allow the sensor to be unplugged. And clearly the "it dropped" scenario is possible.
The most obvious thing is watching a DVD/BD, or streaming a movie, or HDMI pass-through, your experience isn't impacted (except you miss voice and IR blasting)
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.
It looks like Microsoft has listened to their audience once again, and while it means that people who turn off the Kinect features won't have access to things like player identification and voice commands (unless, of course, they turn those features back on when needed), those with security concerns will be happy to know that they will still be able play games on their console without the fear that Big Brother is watching them...