When the Xbox one was announced there was a lot of controversy about various features, one of which was the Kinect which at the time always had to be plugged in. Microsoft went back on a lot of things during the launch stages of the console including the Kinect requirements for the console to function and then the console was released to the public. Initially all the console packages came with the Kinect but on June 9th in north America Microsoft began to sell the console without the Kinect unit and unsurprisingly they have double their sales without the Kinect unit.

Does this come as a surprise to you and would you buy the console with or without the Kinect unit?

The weekly deals for Xbox Gold subscribers has been announced today and a few prominent titles are among the games reduced this week.

The most noticeable are the two Xbox One games: Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare (40% off) and the One version of the new Wolfenstein game with 33% off the normal price. In the line-up for the Xbox 360 are a selction of games including many Bioshock titles with varying reduction levels and the original two Doom arcade titles, both 50% off.
 
 

Xbox One
Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare: Xbox One Game (40% off)
Wolfenstein The New Order: Xbox One Game (33% off)

Xbox 360
BioShock Infinite: Games on Demand (57% off)
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 1 Add-on (33% off)
BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 Add-on (33% off)
BioShock Infinite: Clash in Clouds Add-on (50% off)
BioShock Infinite: Columbia’s Finest Add-on (50% off)
BioShock: Games on Demand (75% off)
BioShock 2: Games on Demand (75% off)
Quake Arena: Arcade (50% off)
Wolfenstein 3D: Arcade (50% off)
Doom: Arcade (50% off)
Doom 2: Arcade (50% off)

Sunset Overdrive will be available for digital pre-order on Xbox Insomniac Games had revealed, and hopefully soon. This makes it the first Xbox One game to be confirmed to be up for digital pre-order.

In their series Sunset TV, which takes questions from fans and answeres them community manager Brandon Winfrey has told fans that the pre-orders will have the same in-game content as those copies that get bought at retail, the Day One content. Digital pre-order customers will also get a pre-order bonus although he didn’t specify what that bonus would be.

The video also went into more detail about the ‘amp’ power-ups that will be unlocked during the game and slotted into the character, mainly revealing a new one called ‘Scorched Earth’ which forces bursts of lava upwards from the player’s footfalls to catch groups of chasing enemies in its fiery damage radius.

Sunset Overdrive’s release date is October 28^th in North America and October 31^st for Europe.

A chief staff member of Xbox’s UK team has acknowledged the perception of their console having an ‘inferior’ framerate compared to their rival Sony’s Playstation 4, and the negative effect in could be having on sales in what he calls a ‘perception challenge’ that needs to be overcome.

Speaking to CVG Xbox UK marketing boss Harvey Eagle said that although he personally couldn’t see a difference in framerates or resolutions between the two, he realises that in the market the Xbox One was seen as having the weaker of both and that they must tackle and change this perception.

He sees the decision to do away with the Kinect being a permanent add-on to the console as a step in the right direction to challenge it though, as the resources that the Kinect used to make use of were now freed up for developers to make use of with their games.

“There is some GPU power that can be allocated to Kinect that we’re now freeing up for developers if they want to increase the fidelity of their games.” Eagle said, saying that it was up to the developers how they chose to make use of the freed-up resources now.

Currently as it stands, the Playstation 4 does at times outperform Microsoft’s console with framerates and resolution on games that the consoles share between them; but with the announcement about the Kinect no longer being mandatory having only been made two months ago it is possible we could see the gap becoming smaller as new games are developed to make use of the new higher amount of GPU power available in Xbox Ones.

San Diego Comic Con has been revealed to be the place that more information about the Halo: Master Chief Collection is to be given out to the public, specifically around Halo: Nightfall – a live-action digital series to be released on a weekly basis starting from the game’s release date of November 11^th 2014.

The game itself will have a panel to itself and it’s probable that the talk about Nightfall will be a part of it. Microsoft says it will be a place to be the first to get the details on the story of the series and the production of it, with the panel hosting guests such as 343 Industries’ Kiki Wolf, Halo franchise director Frank O’Connor and “key Halo: Nightfall cast and crew”.

Other games at the event include Sunset Overdrive, which also has its own panel, as well as around 20 playable games including Evolve, Fables Legends and The Crew. The event itself will take place July 24-27 at the San Diego Convention centre.