Gamers uninterested in Microsoft’s next-generation Kinect who were hoping to save some money by purchasing a stand-alone Xbox One are in for some bad news. According to Microsoft’s corporate vice president Phil Harrison, the company currently has no plans to sell the two devices separately. Speaking with CVG at the Gamescom 2013 conference, Harrison made it crystal clear that the Kinect is absolutely integral to the Xbox One experience, and he likened selling the console without a Kinect to selling it without a Blu-ray disc drive or without memory.
“Xbox One is Kinect. They are not separate systems,” Harrison said. “An Xbox One has chips, it has memory, it has Blu-ray, it has Kinect, it has a controller. These are all part of the platform ecosystem.”
Microsoft has been more than willing to backtrack on some policies following backlash from gamers, but it looks like the Xbox One-Kinect bundling policy is here to stay. The new Xbox One will launch this coming November starting at $500, which is $100 more than rival Sony’s PlayStation 4 console.
