Microsoft has once again reverse one of their unpopular policies to entice gamers over to their side, and the company also has an announcement about when Xbox One controller will be available for use on the PC.
In the latest edition of IGN's Ask Microsoft Anything post, a user asked Xbox Corporate Vice President Marc Whitten what would happen if the Xbox One's Kinect were to break, as it was a requirement for users to be able to operate the system. Whitten revealed that, while the Kinect is required for a variety of different tasks on the Xbox One, it is no longer a mandatory part of the machine:
"Games use Kinect in a variety of amazing ways from adding voice to control your squad mates to adding lean and other simple controls beyond the controller to full immersive gameplay. That said, like online, the console will still function if Kinect isn't plugged in, although you won't be able to use any feature or experience that explicitly uses the sensor," Whitten said.
This news is good for those on the fence about the Xbox One due to the privacy concerns that came up when it was announced that the Xbox One would come with the Kinect, or those who simply did not want to deal with voice or motion controls. However, the Xbox One is still part of the Xbox One package, and Microsoft has no plans to put out a version of the Xbox One without the Kinect anytime soon.
In other news, Microsoft also announced to CVG that both the Xbox One controller and the Xbox 360 controller will be available for use on PC's starting in 2014. A company spokesman stated that Microsoft is working hard to bring both controllers over to PC, and that there has been a lot of hard work to make sure that both unique controllers are able to work flawlessly on computers:
"There is also some work that we need to do to make sure that existing PC games that support the Xbox 360 controller, will work with the Xbox One controller. While it seems trivial, it's actually quite a bit of dedicated work for all that to be seamless for the user...We know people want to use the Xbox One controller on their PC, and we do too - we expect to have the functionality available in 2014."
The Xbox One will be available sometime in November of this year.
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