Reporting on the Xbox One has to be at least somewhat comparable to reporting on the political climate in Somalia. Anything you write one week could easily be the exact opposite the following.
Now Marc Whitten is telling IGN that the Xbox One no longer requires the Kinect peripheral to be attached at all times, which is of course in direct opposition to what we have been told in the past.
He does, at first, go to great pains to inform you why you should leave the device plugged in at all times though:
Xbox One is designed to work with Kinect plugged in. It makes gaming better in many ways – from the ability to say “Xbox On” and get right to your personalized homescreen, to the ability to control your TV through voice, Smartglass and more. Kinect allows you to search for your content, instantly move between games and your personalized dash and more with just your voice. Kinect helps you pick up and play by automatically knowing which controller you have in your hands. No more need to interrupt your friends game or navigate through multiple UI screens to sign in and tell the system which controller you are holding. It will even bind the controller to the console if its currently unbound – no searching for special buttons! Of course – these are just a few of the system wide benefits of having Kinect. 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.
So there you have it. Yet another keen course correcting measure for the XB1. Come back next week when Microsoft will surely announce that they’re changing the name to Xbox 720 and making it so the device only accepts HD-DVD discs.
Source: http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/08/05/ask-microsoft-anything-about-xbox-one
