Microsoft: developers love 'consistent' Kinect in Xbox One

You're probably waiting for the next Xbox 180, in which Microsoft offers an Xbox One without a packaged Kinect. You might not want to hold your breath for that one.

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One thing that Microsoft isn't going to change their minds about is bundling Kinect with Xbox One. Why? Because not only is Kinect "at the heart" of Xbox One, but developers "love the fact it is consistent."

Speaking to MCV UK, Xbox Europe VP Chris Lewis says that there hasn't been any temptation to remove Kinect from the Xbox One box. "Kinect is at the heart of the architecture of what we are with Xbox One," he said, "our developers love the fact it is consistent and that they can develop confident that the technology is there for them to create experiences and enhancements in games with its use of voice, gesture and the recognition of you in the room. All of that richness needs to be consistent across Xbox One. So no, we are clear on our vision and our strategy for the hardware, the platform, the services and the content."

Though Xbox One can technically operate without Kinect, Microsoft is clearly seeking to implement new technology into the peripheral that they don't feel is worth leaving out.

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?

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  • reply
    September 11, 2013 5:00 PM

    Ozzie Mejia posted a new article, Microsoft: developers love 'consistent' Kinect in Xbox One.

    You're probably waiting for the next Xbox 180, in which Microsoft offers an Xbox One without a packaged Kinect. You might not want to hold your breath for that one.

    • reply
      September 11, 2013 5:01 PM

      [deleted]

    • reply
      September 11, 2013 5:07 PM

      Most devs wouldn't touch Kinect2 if only some of the systems had them. As it is right now, MS and Sony have to fund Kinect and Move games.

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        September 11, 2013 6:18 PM

        aren't all dualshock 4 controllers move controllers as well?

        • reply
          September 11, 2013 6:20 PM

          I think the flashlight things on the front of the controllers interact with the Move in some way.

          • reply
            September 11, 2013 6:23 PM

            IIRC, with the PS4 camera, a dualshock 4 can act as a move controller?

            • reply
              September 11, 2013 7:25 PM

              By Move, I meant that camera thing. But I think that's how it works

      • reply
        September 11, 2013 9:56 PM

        When factoring in the PS4 do most systems have a Kinect?

    • reply
      September 11, 2013 5:08 PM

      It would not surprise me at ALL if they did a 180. They've had a ton of bad press and they're at a $100 price disadvantage, likely directly related to the Kinect 2.

      My guess is they will try to ride it out for a while, but if they have disappointing sales, one of two things is going to happen. They'll either drop the Kinect on a base model and chop $100 of the price or they'll drop the price $100 and leave the Kinect in and take a hit on each unit.

      • reply
        September 11, 2013 6:08 PM

        That would only splinter their customer base and render the Kinect 2 as a novelty. It'd be more expensive in the long run. I think they're going to stick with the Kinect 2 no matter what, even if it means dropping the price and taking a loss.

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          September 11, 2013 6:43 PM

          It IS a novelty.

          It seems that almost all of the things that they've shown as uses for it are gimmicky and not very useful.

          • reply
            September 11, 2013 6:44 PM

            It hasn't even launched yet, so I don't think we can say for sure what it can do without some actual software to play with.

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              September 11, 2013 6:49 PM

              Kinnect has been out for quite a while and nothing compelling, nothing that would sell Kinect units, was ever produced.

              It's always possible that having it as mandatory might bring some momentum to the device, but there are a shitload of smart people in the gaming industry and I have yet to read of anything that moves the Kinect beyond being an interesting technical achievement. Anything is possible, but wouldn't someone in the past few years have come up with an idea that was really cool and compelling for it?

              • reply
                September 11, 2013 6:54 PM

                The work that Doublefine did with Happy Action Theater and Kinect Party was super awesome and an experience you can't get anywhere else. That have me some hope that something interesting can be done with this tech, and the improved specs have me excited.

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                  September 11, 2013 7:06 PM

                  We'll see. I am not actively hoping it will fail or anything. I just think that the joypad has become the defacto standard for games (on consoles, at least) and that despite all the gimmicks that have been thought up over the years, the joypad is still the standard.

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                    September 11, 2013 7:15 PM

                    Agreed on the thumbstick being the standard. Kinect is most successful when it doesn't try to replace that but creates an experience unique to the control input.

                • reply
                  September 11, 2013 11:54 PM

                  Playing Happy Action Theater with my nephew is one of the most fun gaming experiences I've had in a while. It's so simple, but it's still great, silly fun.

          • reply
            September 11, 2013 11:53 PM

            My brother and his wife use the voice controls on Kinect on literally a daily basis. When you are raising two kids and trying to get meals ready, getting Scout stuff organized, etc., its easier to just say "Xbox pause/play/whatever" than to hint down a controller.

            It may not be something that works for your use case, but to claim Kinect is only for gimmicks I'd to ignore a ton of non-traditional gamers who use its features constantly.

        • reply
          September 12, 2013 11:43 AM

          Well it already IS a novelty, sad to say for Microsoft's sake.

      • reply
        September 11, 2013 6:23 PM

        They aren't going to have poor sales

        • reply
          September 11, 2013 6:44 PM

          Sony thought the same thing when they came out with a $499 base unit. It took quite a while and a price drop for it to recover.

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            September 11, 2013 6:46 PM

            Even with their high price, I don't think you could describe their sales as "poor"

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              September 11, 2013 6:52 PM

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3

              Start at "Sales and Production Numbers" and keep reading.

              PS3 took quite a while to catch on in the US. Price and lack of exclusives are cited as contributing factors.

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                September 12, 2013 7:04 AM

                PS3 also had a year disadvantage in launch and poor on-line for a long time.

        • reply
          September 11, 2013 7:11 PM

          [deleted]

          • reply
            September 11, 2013 7:28 PM

            Preorders represent only a negligible fraction of the market, hardcore gamers and fanboys mostly. MS knows how to handle the family and casual market, and Kinect is a key piece of the puzzle for that.

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            September 11, 2013 8:33 PM

            I've read they are selling better then they did with the 360 preorders.

      • reply
        September 11, 2013 6:44 PM

        They can't do that. Publishers have already invested in developing Kinnect titles. More likely they take the hit and sell at a greater loss.

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          September 11, 2013 6:46 PM

          Sony is coming out with a set top Vita for $99, even though some titles will not be able to played on it because of the lack of a trackpad.

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        September 11, 2013 7:00 PM

        I think they're more likely to take the hit on each unit. They seem to really want the Kinect to be utilized in games (why I don't know), and that won't happen if it's not included with every system.

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          September 11, 2013 7:03 PM

          I do think it's a really cool piece of hardware, but it seems to me that people keep trying to replace the mouse, the keyboard, and the joypad, but no one has ever created a device that was compelling or usefullfor more than a few games.

          Think about the sheer number of failed controllers over the years. Most of them were more novelty than anything else. Remember the Space Orb? Or how about the force feedback mouse?

          • reply
            September 11, 2013 9:15 PM

            Well, that's just like, your opinion, man. I was playing Skyward Sword the other day and it seemed pretty compelling to me.

            I would argue that the incredible lack of creativity and risk taking that plagues AAA development as a whole, and the hostility of "hardcore gamers" to anything new or different that feeds that, have just as much to do with the lack of control innovation as does bad design or the inherent superiority of conventional control.

            Have there been gimmicky products that failed simply because the weren't good enough? Of course. But I think to assume conventional gamepads and KB+M are the be-all and end-all of game control would be pretty closed minded.

            As technology advances, we're going to see a lot of new and interesting ways to interact with video games and we shouldn't dismiss the out of hand simply because other products have failed before.

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              September 11, 2013 11:58 PM

              Iawtp. I haven't played Skyward Sword, but playing No More Heroes and Mad World definitely showed me that new control schemes can open up entirely new genres and experiences in games. As a gamer, I like that.

    • reply
      September 11, 2013 6:36 PM

      This is all just fluff from a VP at a trade show, with no substance; he basically denied each challenge to XBox One's position, but forgot to provide substance. The earlier video of the enhance skeletal model and the stereo facial recognition was nice, but it doesn't answer how games will actually use that technology. That last part is up to game developers, but I haven't heard of any games that would do something genuinely innovative with the XBox One Kinect.

      It's almost like a relapse of the original Kinect launch, as best witnessed through these zeitgeist-capturing Bombcast quotes:

      - The day of launch, after Alex Navarro says he doesn't like Kinect, Jeff Gerstmann explains: "Third parties are looking at this thing and saying, 'Alright, great... we know how to make half-assed mini-game collections; let's just make another one of those!'... It's really interesting technology, but if all they're gonna do is make games that actually would probably play better on a Wii, they're fucked." (Giant Bombcast 11-09-2010 26:20)

      - After Brad described his review of Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor: "I came out of this game essentially REJECTING the very idea of Kinect wholesale. It is a fucking FAILED piece of technology that was NOT ready for the market... you guys are trying to make it do all kinds of stuff that it was never capable of doing... you got LUCKY that it sold 10 million units out of the gate." (Giant Bombcast 6-19-2012, 1:21:32)

      Kinect Sports Rivals is basically fodder for the Wii Sports audience, and yes it does have an audience, but both Crimson Dragon and Ryse backed away from Kinect-exclusive control for a very good reason: Kinect-exclusive real-time or near-real-time control in an action game is exasperating.

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        September 11, 2013 6:44 PM

        I don't think we can call it a relapse of the first Kinect when we haven't even seen many games that use it yet. Would it be nice if there were a bunch of those at launch so we could assess it better? Sure. At least the tech is there, so I'm ready to see what devs can do with a guaranteed install base. If we are here waiting a year from now with little to show for it, I'll be pretty pissed, but for now I'm in wait and see mode.

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          September 11, 2013 6:50 PM

          Sounds more like bend over and wait mode. =)

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          September 11, 2013 6:56 PM

          That's sort of how it went in 2010: there was Dance Central and Kinect Sports that were the shining stars in the Kinect lineup, Kinect Adventures was a WTF pack-in, and there were a bunch of future titles that were referred to: "Project Draco" (what became Crimson Dragon) and a Steel Battalion game were revealed at TGS 2010, and Kinect Star Wars was announced by Kudo Tsunoda on the Kinect launch week: http://www.shacknews.com/article/66420/star-wars-kinect-game-due

          ...and yeah, we know how those three turned out. Kinect Star Wars got delayed past Holiday 2011 and ended up being laughable; Steel Battalion was a horribly unplayable game, and Crimson Dragon got delayed indefinitely (which turned out to be a rework to XBox One). It's up to Marc Whitten to ensure that the XBox One Kinect game pipeline is far better than the broken promises in the past.

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            September 11, 2013 7:05 PM

            I'm not going to argue with you on how the original Kinect went, I'm just not ready to draw parallels so far into the future that we are already declaring the new Kinect a failure before its even been launched.

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          September 12, 2013 12:01 AM

          So you're actually waiting to see what a game/hardware platform can actually do before making a definitive judgment on it?

          You must be a fucking n00b.

      • reply
        September 11, 2013 6:54 PM

        I took a class sponsored by Microsoft where we spent 10 weeks designing a game that used the Kinect and it was pretty difficult. Getting the skeletal, depth, etc. data from the Kinect was simple but actually using it in a game and actually making a game that was fun was a bitch (me and my team did not succeed in making a fun game)

        The technology is amazing and using it isn't difficult, but developers are having issues just thinking about how it could be implemented into a game. You have the obvious like a flying game or golf game and the Kinect is precise enough to make those work, but is it actually fun? The Kinect has a lot of potential but nobody knows what to do with it

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          September 11, 2013 7:08 PM

          That's really my point. No one has shown how Kinect would be useful outside of a few niche games. It's not a general purpose controller.

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            September 11, 2013 7:21 PM

            no one is stopping developers from making a game that uses the Kinect and a controller.

            In any case, repeatedly comparing the new to the old and ignoring potential increases in fidelity seems silly. The first version's latency and lack of fidelity very clearly limited its applications along with the fact that it was an accessory creating a smaller market that a developer will be reticent to put AAA money into for a core game.

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              September 11, 2013 7:32 PM

              I don't disagree that it's much improved. At least that's what has been indicated in the demos.

              It's just that the concept has been around for years, predating the Kinect, and no one has really come up with anything other than niche games for such devices. It's just really a really cool thing that no one seems to know how to monetize.

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                September 11, 2013 7:41 PM

                The value of the concept rests entirely in things like the latency and fidelity. That previous attempts with much more primitive technology failed seems to have minimal bearing on future devices as far as I can tell. I don't see anyone decrying haptic feedback as a concept because our current extremely limited versions haven't been great yet. I've made numerous posts before about cool advanced stuff I think you could do with Kinect at a high enough fidelity which are entirely impossible with poorer quality versions of the same hardware/software.

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                September 11, 2013 7:46 PM

                You mean it's a thing that no one seems to know how to turn into a satisfying control device (beyond Harmonix and Double Fine).

                Monetization is easy: make mini-game collections and QTE-fests, and ride on brand recognition like Star Wars, and ultra-focus-group-appealing stuff like Kinect Sports.

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                  September 11, 2013 8:09 PM

                  Is that worth a $100 price disadvantage when the console would be be fine without it? It makes more sense as a separate peripheral rather than as part of the overall package.

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                    September 11, 2013 8:22 PM

                    Sadly, there is a significant consumer base who would buy an XBox One starting with only Kinect Sports Rivals, or for motion and voice control on their TV. I can't dispute that logic, but I can sigh at it disgustedly.

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                      September 11, 2013 8:39 PM

                      Sadly? Disgustedly? Grow the fuck up.

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                        September 11, 2013 9:16 PM

                        archvile is an unending font of game industry knowledge, but he has got what must be the narrowest, smallest-minded vision for the medium... just zero intuition. It's pretty mystifying, really.

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                          September 11, 2013 9:34 PM

                          I'm sorry for being rude to him, but this common mentality of "things I personally don't like still sell, OH THE HUMANITY" needs to die in a fire.

                    • reply
                      September 12, 2013 1:40 PM

                      I normally like your posts, but this one is super douchey.

                  • reply
                    September 11, 2013 8:38 PM

                    Certain audiences may laugh, but the Kinect and the non-gaming features are the Xbox One's biggest asset. The system isn't as powerful as the PS4, and Sony has always had stronger exclusives. They need to differentiate their product.

                    "Hardcore gamers" tend to want a very traditional console, and that's fine, but they make the mistake of believing that every gaming device should follow that same strategy, when there's not really enough room in that market for a whole pile of very similar devices to all be successful.

                    History supports this. The Xbox and the GameCube didn't have much to differentiate themselves from the PS2 besides some exclusives here and there, and they ended up as also-rans. People who want a PS4 are going to get a PS4. Why should Microsoft and Nintendo make PS4 clones when that device already exists?

                    This discussion has been had a million times about Nintendo. Hardcore gamers sneer at the Wii, saying they should have just made a GameCube HD, but would those same gamers really have bought one? Or would Nintendo just have gotten the same result as before?

                    It's smarter for products to be unique and aim for different, though perhaps overlapping, audiences. Otherwise you're just dividing up the same exact pie into more and more pieces.

            • reply
              September 11, 2013 7:38 PM

              "For far too long, the controller has kept people from playing games. 'Project Natal' totally eliminates the need for a controller, and we believe it's going to bring people together in a way we haven't seen before." -- Steven Spielberg, E3 2009. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/01/spielberg-unveils-motion-_n_209947.html

              "With Kinect it's all controller-free" -- Kudo Tsunoda, September 2010. http://www.shacknews.com/article/65490/microsofts-kudo-tsunoda-talks-up

              ...okay, now that that's stated first, let's continue back in context:

              "With Kinect it's all controller-free, but it's not like we're trying to take controllers out of the equation. You saw the great controller games we're showing today like Halo and Fable. I think games that involve both controllers and Kinect as well are totally possible."
              ...
              "If you have good gameplay depth, and the more you play the better you are at the game, that's what makes games addictive for core gamers, and I think that's a lot of what we focused on in developing the Kinect launch line-up - making it accessible so you don't have to learn new controls every time you play a new game, but still providing all that gameplay depth and skill that core gamers love."


              There was a LOT of emphasis from Microsoft back in the early Project Natal days on the Kinect without a controller. That was their marketing message for years, and I wouldn't be surprised if the heavy emphasis of "controllers are complicated" in their marketing message was also echoing to game pitching and selection for the first Kinect round. And yes, the skeletal model for original Kinect failed when the player was sitting down.

              I haven't seen gameplay videos of Ryse or Crimson Dragon using Kinect motion control and a controller simultaneously, so I'm guessing those games emphasize voice control with the controller, and not realtime motion control simultaneously with the controller. Steel Battalion had a ton of unused controller buttons, so there was the accusation of the game being shoved over to Kinect midway in development.

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                September 11, 2013 7:44 PM

                Your ability to focus on marketing quotes as 100% representative of reality is impressive considering the whole point of marketing is not change how people perceive the reality of the situation.

                It is simply not hard to conceive of cool ways voice and motion detection could be added to a core game with a controller, likewise for things like facial recognition. That it hasn't been achieved yet with v1 hardware for a variety of reasons hardly changes that.

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                  September 11, 2013 7:47 PM

                  So then, where are the demos of controller-and-Kinect-motion-control? Where are the headlines of "XBox One Kinect 2 Redeems Self From Steel Battalion Moment"?

                  • reply
                    September 11, 2013 7:50 PM

                    [deleted]

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                    September 11, 2013 7:50 PM

                    Actually, I remember this: http://abload.de/img/laaaagtap05lt6.gif

                    Low-latency indeed. It's still not fast enough for me.

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                    September 11, 2013 7:58 PM

                    Those headlines don't exist because the console isn't out yet.

                    And it's bizarre that you take a shitty game like Steel Battalion and then blame Kinect for the fact that it sucked. The game was just shit to begin with.

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                    September 11, 2013 8:31 PM

                    why does a piece of hardware need to redeem itself for an unrelated entity putting out a shitty piece of software for it? this happens to literally every piece of hardware out there

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              September 11, 2013 8:36 PM

              "no one is stopping developers from making a game that uses the Kinect and a controller. "

              That's not entirely true. Or more specifically it wasn't true. It's probably true today. Maybe. But for Kinect 1.0 at launch I'm pretty certain you weren't allowed to mix Kinect and the controller during gameplay.

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            September 12, 2013 7:11 AM

            oh well, then since no one has figured it out YET lets just abandon the whole thing!

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          September 11, 2013 8:29 PM

          Kinect as a gaming device is a complete joke, especially at a point in time when most developers are trying to be as cross-platform as possible. It's just a hopeless battle for Microsoft that increasingly feels like it originated from non-gamers and was forced into a gaming environment by people who don't really get games.

          But, you know, maybe the entire Shack is wrong and derelict is right. Maybe he knows some secret game development trick that hasn't yet been revealed to the masses!

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            September 11, 2013 8:33 PM

            I just seriously don't think it's hard to envision uses for some part or parts of it. Is it really that hard to imagine a Bethesda RPG (or something like LA Noire) that has NPCs that actually react to your voice or expression?

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              September 11, 2013 9:40 PM

              It's easy to envision it... and it sucks because nobody wants to talk to NPCs or wave their arms around or be hyper aware of what their expression is because we don't actually want that level of interaction and I think devs know that. Hell I can say that people MS know that because I've talked to a couple.

              I think MS is great at drinking their on kool-aid and the kinect is a prime example of that. It's a very cool device in its own right but all it does for games is allow for a level of interaction that most people don't want. Video games are about planting your ass in a couch and letting your mind go, flagellating around and talking rip you right out of that experience.

              I think the OR works because it's an immersion device first and not a control device. It also requires minimal movement to be effective.

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                September 11, 2013 10:28 PM

                I think it's absurd to take the position that no one wants more points of interaction than a controller and maybe head tracking. That's certainly not the end game in any piece of science fiction ever. I'm seriously baffled by some people repeatedly stating the idea that you can't be maximally immersed unless you're in a near vegetative state with your body. Of course it's more immersive to pick a preselected piece of dialog than get to say the words you actually want. Of course it's more immersive for your reaction to be preselected by the developer. Absurd.

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                  September 11, 2013 11:08 PM

                  Scifi end game is Neo jacked in to the matrix learning kung fu... while sitting in a vegetative state.

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                    September 11, 2013 11:32 PM

                    good points! we want maximum immersion with minimal movement. not the other way around!

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            September 11, 2013 8:39 PM

            Are you implying that the shack is some sort of authority on game development? Lol.

            A few devs like Doublefine created novel experiences with the Kinect. Many didn't. You can choose to be an optimist or pessimist, I guess.

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      September 11, 2013 6:53 PM

      [deleted]

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      September 11, 2013 7:08 PM

      Hahah, oh man, crying here.

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      September 11, 2013 8:43 PM

      IMHO, voice commands in a character heavy game would be even more immersion breaking to me than gestures.

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      September 11, 2013 8:50 PM

      [deleted]

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        September 11, 2013 11:46 PM

        why the hell is it built into a camera when a microphone in the controller would have done the trick?

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          September 11, 2013 11:57 PM

          Well for one thing the camera does make the microphone stuff work a lot better, kinect can tell when you're speaking to it or not.

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            September 12, 2013 4:42 AM

            WTF that works perfectly fine with the 360 mic.

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              September 12, 2013 4:55 AM

              Except with the Kinect you don't have to wear the mic or hold a button to start a voice command, and it should be much better at picking up commands and not getting confused.

              Obviously a mic can do the job, but in theory the voice command element of Kinect should be a lot better than any pervious alternative.

              Voice commands for OS or games haven't really caught on yet, with Kinect we're going to find out of it was a hardware issue or just people don't want to use the voice commands.

              I'm not trying say Kinect is totally worth it as a voice command only device but people shouldn't dismiss that it will do voice commands better than any previous device.

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        September 12, 2013 12:02 AM

        Because tinfoil feels so nice on the scalp

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        September 12, 2013 12:49 AM

        I would not mind said features, but I really don't want or need them either. Speaking to my iPhone/iPad was cool for a while - and then it wasn't. It really isn't practical, and it isn't how I like to operate my devices. As such, I would have much preferred the cost of the Kinect being used to make the console more powerful or better in other ways.

        I simply do not believe in the Kinect concept. I don't know if most Xbone users will be happy with it, and I don't know if Kinect games will sell well. Maybe they will, and I'll be just fine with that, but I'm happy there's a console alternative which keeps things basic and concentrates on what I call the essentials. I have nothing against innovation, quite the opposite, but I just don't think movement / voice controls are a good innovation.

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        September 12, 2013 3:33 AM

        For me, it's just not a useful thing. I have no problem using a controller to make decisions about what my system is doing.

        Also, with XBO in particular, I don't have TV service, so swapping between the two and/or using any of the stuff MS has tried to get people excited about is just not relevant for me.

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      September 11, 2013 10:53 PM

      They want the kinect required so that if a dev uses it the game would be harder to port to other devices so they'd have more exclusives.

      Kinda like windows and directx.

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        September 11, 2013 11:02 PM

        I kinda want a minority report style interface, although ironically that movie is a privacy and civil rights nightmare.

    • reply
      September 11, 2013 11:43 PM

      okay, I won't hold my breath.

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      September 11, 2013 11:48 PM

      It doesn't matter how often that simple fact is pointed out, *hardcore gamers* will continue to claim that they are the ones who know what the people really want. Therefore, any developer who doesn't agree with them is obviously a liar or corporate shill.



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        September 12, 2013 2:09 AM

        I wish Microsoft success with the facebook crowd then. I'll be elsewhere.

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          September 12, 2013 7:00 AM

          Facebook crowd? LOL

        • reply
          September 12, 2013 7:17 AM

          Sorry to break this to you, but you absence will not even be noticed.

          • reply
            September 12, 2013 10:35 AM

            It's a good thing you're sorry, because I would have told him with all kinds of pleasure.

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      September 12, 2013 3:50 AM

      Why would I ever want to speak or 'motion' to my TV or console when I can have a button for it...... stupid microsoft.

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      September 12, 2013 4:00 AM

      Wonder if anyone could do a decent RTS using Kinect? Sparks Kinect interface looks pretty good.

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        September 12, 2013 4:29 AM

        No, it's not precise enough. It does claw-tracking (not individual finger tracking). You'd need finger tracking to have the proper precision needed for an RTS and low latency, neither of which the Kinect 2 have -> http://abload.de/img/laaaagtap05lt6.gif

        That's still far too much latency.

        You could make a dumbed down one, like the Halo RTS that did so well.

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          September 12, 2013 4:30 AM

          Something like Homeworld would be very good on it. But I agree not the action type RTS games like Starcraft.

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      September 12, 2013 7:12 AM

      Did anyone play Mass Effect 3 with the Kinect voice commands? How was that? Did it make the game more fun to play or was it just gimmicky?

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        September 12, 2013 7:14 AM

        It wasn't horrible, but it was utterly un-essential

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      September 12, 2013 11:43 AM

      They can try to convince themselves all they want but the reality is that their actual customers have little interest in the Kinect, in general. That's not to say that there aren't some fans of the peripheral but overall, it seems blatantly obvious that customers would far rather pay $100 less than be saddled with some unnecessary and (frankly) not that interesting piece of extra hardware, regardless of how "consistent" it makes MS's platform for devs.

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        September 12, 2013 1:01 PM

        Both consoles are sold out of their pre-orders. I don't think their customers have little interest in it as much as a vocal few who think they are the only customers to cater to don't like it.

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          September 13, 2013 5:05 PM

          Plus touting pre-sale reserves to show that it's somehow wildly popular hardly proves anything. If history has proven anything it's that gamers will go nuts to get something first on release day.

          Sold out consoles at launch proves absolutely zilch.

          Time will tell the real story when they (MS) end up offering an Xbox One without the Kinect and for $100 less - which I'll bet good money happens WAY sooner than Xbox fans think.

      • reply
        September 12, 2013 1:35 PM

        Lol at "actual customers". So all the people who bought the original Kinect are imaginary customers?

        • reply
          September 13, 2013 5:03 PM

          Original Kinect was just another in a long line of gimmicks, though, if we're being realistic. It got played a bit initially and then it sat around, mostly, for most gamers - if most reports are to be believed (which I think they are).

          By "actual customers" I'm referring to the mainstream masses, the ones that don't read gaming sites but who show up en masse when the latest Call of Duty is released. We may all think we're representational of the main customers for the Xbox or PS3 but the reality is, and has always been, that we only represent the barest tip of the iceberg.

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