The big problem with the Xbox One was that it was underpowered because of the Kinect requirement, so they ditched Kinect then rebranded as the Xbox One S, throwing in a 4K Blu Ray player.

Still wasn't enough, so the One X had full 4K capabilities.

If they had launched with the One X things would have looked a lot different.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How did the Kinect factor into things in terms of power?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Microsoft required 10% of system resources be reserved for Kinect support, even in games that didn't support Kinect features.

https://www.eurogamer.net/how-the-xbox-one-gpu-reserve-unlock-actually-works

That reduction in horsepower for the actual games showed up in reduced resolution and framerate.

Lifting that restriction allowed the Xbox One to reach parity with the PS4.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don't know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it's not exactly unheard of.