Sony Nixing Camera Could Put Microsoft's Kinect in Jeopardy

It's not breaking news since it was discovered a day after Sony's E3 conference, but it's official that one of the reasons for a $100 difference in price between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One is the company's decision to sell the camera peripheral separately compared to Microsoft shipping their console with an updated Kinect.

Looking deeper into it, there's much more than going into this than Sony just wanting a price drop. Not taking advantage of a technology they created could backfire, but they could also limit what their competition does.

Not packaging in the camera and making it a $60 add-on is not going to sell well, especially at launch. There's not going to be enough for the casual consumer to justify an attachment that costs about $15 more than a controller.

Bringing up the controller, it now looks foolish on Sony's end when considering they added a special LED-light to every controller for the camera to easily read where the player is at.

"What's worse, the DualShock 4's integrated LEDs are now good for little more than visual flair," writes IGN's Scott Lowe. "Per Sony, the light-up panels will help indicate the player associated with each controller and, when supported, react to in-game cues, such as blinking red when a player is low on health. Ultimately, the limited functionality of the LEDs without the aid of the Eye won't impact the player experience or even drastically diminish the overall battery life of the controller, but it's a lingering reminder of Sony's failure to support the tech."

Thing is, it's too early to tell how much the Eye or Microsoft's Kinect will actually be used by third-party software. Early indication of games at E3 show that there's not much support despite little things that gamers can easily live without.

In general, if both consoles don't use a certain tech, then third-party developers generally ignore it. That's why the SIXAXIS motion control was barely touched outside of Sony's developers. That's why generally the Kinect has been a gimmick for most third-party software.

If Sony included the camera with the PS4 as originally planned, that means there's a near 100 percent install base for the peripherals with the exception of people that bought the console used -- unless they decided to go the route that Microsoft took and made the Kinect mandatory to use.

Now with that market fragmented, Sony could have made a decision that makes the Kinect generally useless except for navigation in the Xbox One and exclusive titles. That makes the higher $100 plateau harder to justify for the gamer that's deciding on the next console.

[Source: IGN]
[Image credit: Flickr/Ryoichi Tanaka]