Phil Spencer: Kinect pre-order numbers are 'good,' Microsoft will 'work hard to fill out the demand'

@FrozenPlasma

You only got 10?! That seems pretty tight. If stores only get a handful of Kinects, I don't want to see headlines from MS about it being sold out everywhere. Just get it out there, stacked on the shelves. Don't try and create some illusion/fake demand.

@Uncle Jesse fake demand? what a great idea! /MS execs

@FrozenPlasma All four of my local Gamestops are at their order limit. And I am in BFE Kentucky.

@Uncle Jesse

So you want the opposite of the Wii launch (an tightly controlled, artificial shortage that lasted 2 years)? Of course it kinda worked in Nintendo's favor...

@Dustin F

The PS2 of north america? Think that may be a teeny tiny exaggeration there mate.

@Dustin F I'd rather say the Wii is the PS2 of this generation. At least as far as being the best selling console and having a lot of hype behind it from the get go.

@Dustin F didn't you get the memo? Kinect threads are purely for Sony trolls. haters be hating...

@onlysublime

I think Microsoft fans do a decent enough job of hating on Kinect without the Sony crew stepping in. =P

@Bubbameister33 I think trolls are actually the only ones praising kinect

@Dustin F


tl, dr

@Pure Black World Tendency

The wii is nothing like the PS2. From a gamer's perspective, anyhow. IF you loved the PS2, I suspect you either love the PS3 or the 360.

The wii is successful, so was the PS2. But they are not similar. Some people are way too busy keeping score with game sales to realize I'm not really talking about that. The wii's library of games is simply not like the PS2s, and it's primarily a game console. Get it?

At any rate, I do not have a 360, and only occasionally play one. I strongly prefer the PS3's first party titles and most other games I want are multis. So the fanboy stuff is not on point at all. A PS3 fan, especially one who wanted Eye games, can appreciate Kinect.

@CobraClutch

?

Up until now they weren't working hard. That's the underline message.

@FrozenPlasma

Underline message? The message they highlighted? What's the underlying meaning of that message?

@CobraClutch

The way I read the Spencer quote made Phil sound like it was going to be a hassle to fill the demand.

"We have to work hard? Ugh nooooooooooooo!"

@FrozenPlasma

it's still completely misconstruing microsoft's comment.

@Puertoricarious

Most likely, haha

@A Sandwich

Free online play, not being bombarded with ads, and no extra fees to use Netflix.

Though calling him a troll was a pretty nice touch. His, "I have a feeling" quote holds just as much merit as your "PSN is so, so much less than Live" jive.

Hey, I rhymed, sweet.

@A Sandwich

Aside from the more tightly integrated features (custom music in every game, cross game invites/chat in every game, party chat in every game, seamless party chat between games/menus/movies), what's different?

I've got both, and the only reason I use Live more is because my friends do. Sure the voice chat options are amazingly useful, but outside of that and excellent integration in the Halo series I fail to see how it's leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze

Bombarded with ads? I wouldn't even know where to find an advertisement on Live. Are you talking about the panel that shows up and let me renew a month of Live for $1? Because, good God yeah, that's monstrous.

@Ezio Auditore da Fire

I rarely hear about complaints from ads from non-sony people. I mean, its logical the way its set up.

When I go to the "movies" section, I may see "ads" for what movies are on sale, and new arrivals. I go to the "inside xbox" section, and see things like "how to get these achievements for MoH." The commuity tab has stuff about facebook and twitter, the music tab has new arrivals in music, etc,etc.

Its not like Im searching for an arcade game and I get an ad for a double cheeseburger. Im seeing ads for...arcade games. Which makes sense considering im LOOKING FOR AN ARCADE GAME.

@A Sandwich you sound more like you're trolling. Did he mention PSN? No, not at all. In another place, I guy voiced his opinion that he didn't think that it was doing well because he hadn't seen a single pre-order where he worked, and you snidely remarked insinuating that he works at domino's. It's obvious that you're a huge 360 fan, but you're trying really hard to try to stop people from saying anything opposing your view.

But since you brought PSN up...well, obviously it's $60 cheaper, unless you get a discount on a card which you have to watch for sales for. You have tons of psone classics, tons of psn games, a store that actually lets you view multiple things at once in greater detail then some giant text, a store that you can reorganize how things are listed, a store that has items sectioned off perfectly, and I never get hit with ads.

What's that, you say you've never been bombarded with ads? You're joking, right? You've lost all credibility right there. Even in another topic, the guy I was debating would at least admit that there were a lot of ads. He wasn't as bothered by them as I was, but he didn't pretend like he'd never seen an ad. My brother tried to cancel his Live. Did they have it in an easy to reach spot? Let's see, is it account management? Nope, is there something under billing, no, there's nothing in any of the reasonable spots until you finally find the crap, and then there's FOUR PAGES of ads. That's ridiculous, you're not getting superior service for paying for Live, you're having microsoft show ads.

I don't care if you like your 360 more, people should be pissed over this. My brother said he would never renew live again because of how obnoxious it was, and he doesn't have a PS3. So, no obnoxious ads, if I do decide to pay money yearly, then I get PS+ which I actually kinda of like, and I don't have to pay just to use online. Hm, yeah, PSN sure is far behind, it just happens to have everything Live has plus more.

Oh well, at least Microsoft gave me a nifty battery only controller. I just love going to the store to pay for a new accessory, one that's the price of a game, just so that I don't have to switch out batteries all the time. And don't tell me this is where they had to cut costs, because that's bull. Sony was selling PS3's with blu ray players, wifi, and a rechargeable controller for $300 and making a profit before MS ever added wifi to their system. It doesn't cost that much more to make it rechargeable.

@chimpsmith

Don't worry A Sandwich. At the end of his novel "Ye Must Not Troll" he just end ups giving sarcastic trolling jabs at Microsoft's battery powered controller.

@Nofriendo I never said not to troll. I just said that he sounds a lot like what he's accusing others of.

@chimpsmith

Geez, dude, lighten up. First of all, I was responding to a previous post of ichibansony's that was, apparently, erased. Excuse me for trolling the troll, although I gather from your thesis that you wouldn't have minded what he had to say since you clearly feel the same way. I apologize for disagreeing.

It's clear that you have little experience on Live, but why would I need to do the things you claim are advantages? It's been a while since I've used PSN, but is it really so poorly put together that users are forced to reorganize it? That sounds awful.

As for the ads, I just don't understand the hate. Most of the time they're telling me about a new game that I wanted to know about. Those bastards! They're non-intrusive and they never interrupt me. So what's the problem?

And PS+ is a joke. Especially since everything they give you is just being leased to you anyway.

As for the controller with batteries, I can't understand your disdain. I have a rechargeable battery pack. It cost me $5. It's great. Not like when your DS3's battery dies and you have to go buy a whole new controller. Again, that just sounds really piss-poor. Not to mention how absurdly uncomfortable the DS3 is when compared to the 360's pad, but that's just personal preference, I suppose.

@A Sandwich

I didn't know his comment got deleted. I did a search and couldn't find it anywhere except that one post up top, so I figured you were responding to that one. If you call over 15 months of XBL little experience, then okay, I never got much experience. I used to play GOW2 all the time with people on there (actually beat horde mode on insane difficulty :D ).

You sound like you have little experience with PSN. By reorganize, I didn't mean they select each piece and move it around, I meant that in the store (and also in your hd's game collection) you can tap square and it will change how it is set up. Like, I've always hated the store on Live because you can only see like 4 or 5 titles at once (at least in game add-ons the last time I checked; I know I had it at a much longer list in movies one time, but who knows, maybe I just didn't press a button or something). On PSstore, it will change how large and how many items are shown in a column at once, which can not only make it visually appealing, but easier to see stuff. I usually leave it on the normal setting, but it's neat to be able to change it.

So no, it's not poorly put together at all. I like how they set up the sections, like, a lot of sections for specific items so you can quickly find exactly what you want if you don't wanna do the search bar. The hate for the ads is that they're freaking huge on the dashboard, and it takes too long to scan through them all. Like, on my PS3, it feels more like MY system, because I can customize the XMB theme in basically any way I want, and the majority of the stuff on there is for me to change options.

R planteer said that they never got hit with ads that weren't related, but, they could do all this so much more subtly and not in your face with the ads. On my PS3, I'm not like, hm lemme go change an option, oh crap, I gotta see like 4 lines of ads before I get there. On my XMB, I never see them unless I go into What's new (which you can start your game from if you wanna quickly scan the small ad boxes first) but this is unobtrusive to my experience. The ads on the main parts of the dashboard aren't too awful, but why not make the thing look more visually appealing and take less time to go through? In what's new, I see every ad with one up or down touch. If I go to movies I see movies in the same way, easily viewable with a link to the store so that I don't have to scroll down over-sized boxes until I hit the end and then scroll back.

The ads are a huge problem when they hound you when you're trying to buy something or trying to cancel renewals. It's not like I look at an ad and I'm like, oh man, 360 games can never be good ever just because of this ad. But it's like, imagine if you have an option between 2 houses. In one house, you can open doors regularly, in the other, you have to knock on a door 3 times and then you can open it. The 2nd one hardly takes any time at all to do, but it will eventually get on your nerves. Sure, the 360 stuff isn't a deal breaker just because of some small quirks I have with it, but they wear down on you overtime. That's why I finally bought my PS3, I got tired of these things with my 360.

Sure, the 360 has some small but nice things of its own, like how in the marketplace hen you're getting game add-ons you can scroll over to see more info on the game the add-on is for. Not really much use for it, but it's a nice aesthetically pleasing addition, and enough to where I wish that Sony would put that on PSN. The thing that pops up when you hit the xbox button (i have no idea what that thing is called) is pretty nice too. And this is one of my biggest beefs with the PS3. The XMB that pops up is useful, but why the crap is it the ENTIRE XMB. 90% of the buttons you can't use until you return to the main XMB, so why not just make a smaller box like the 360's that takes less time to load?

However, at the end of the day, the PS3 has enough little things add up to where I like it more. It was enough of a difference to where when I got my PS3, apprehensive about whether it would be what I hoped it would since I had just spent $300, I became less against buying DLC. I had always disliked DLC because it was incredibly overpriced in most games (see dead space). But now, I kinda like buying things on PSN, I'm not sure why, but I feel more comfortable buying stuff there.

"And PS+ is a joke. Especially since everything they give you is just being leased to you anyway. " Xbox live is leasing you the ability to use certain functions of games.I didn't know about the battery packs, and that's actually kinda cool.

@chimpsmith hey chimpsmith! Stop writing so much at once and go eat breakfast!

@chimpsmith

Damnit chimpsmith, here you go again with your ginormous replies talking about ads on XBL. They're not that bad, dude! And on the tab to change your personal options, there aren't any! At all! Also, not sure if you were aware of this, but you can actually tap the bumpers if you want to scroll left and right through a specific tab. There you go, no more ads that somehow make you feel like your watching the Super Bowl on your Xbox or something.

I had a fun time trying to play Joe Danger on the PS3 the other day. Gotta love those awesome mandatory updates followed by tedious installs. Those really get in the way and hinder my experience with the PS3 substantially. Nearly every time I try to play my brother's PS3 I have to sit through these updates. Granted my brother rarely plays his PS3, but still some of these updates are frickin ridiculous.

After I finally got to play Joe Danger I just wasn't in the mood, so I just played Super Meat Boy instead.

@Liquidfingers yeah, there are a lot of updates, and I wish they would put some more content into each one, but if you commonly play your PS3, you actually don't get them very much. With plus it auto downloads them anyways, but yeah, the installing can be a little annoying. The last update I did, it took forever to install, which none of the others took that long for me. I have no idea what was up with that one, I was wondering if my PS3 had frozen or something because it took so long just for the installation. I only get an update a maximum of every 2 months though, and i think usually less than that, so not too bad.

And I said the ads weren't that bad, just that they wear down on you. Seriously though, the online crap pisses me off so much (the ads on their site I mean when you try to change your account stuff). But something I just thought of, I don't think any updates are mandatory unless you try to go online...is Joe danger online or something? I haven't played it yet, so I have no idea.

@chimpsmith

Nah I don't think it's strictly online, but I'm pretty sure that it has an online multiplayer mode. Don't quote me on that, though. I was just kidding about not playing Joe Danger after all. I did give it a whirl, I mean I waited a half an hour for it to boot up so it would have been a waste of time if I didn't try it. It's fun, you should check it out. Colorful, goofy, and the controls take a little while to get used to. Very entertaining though.

@neoXmahi

I don't know what you're talking about, man.

I think the money spent on flashing white robes and Cirque du Solell was a wise investment.

@neoXmahi Excuse me $500,000,000. Needed three more 0's. And yes, I do have a Wii, Xbox 360 Slimmer and PS3.

@Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Ha ha ha ha! Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

@neoXmahi

"Either that, or they only have a few thousand because uh... There hasn't been a single 'Kinect' Pre-Ordered where I work."

Well, to be completely fair, I don't think Domino's is in the business of taking pre-orders for anything other than pizza and, like, breadsticks and wings and stuff.