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.
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.
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Shacknews
replyOzzie 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.-
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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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When factoring in the PS4 do most systems have a Kinect?
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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.-
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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?-
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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?
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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.-
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.
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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.-
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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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. -
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.
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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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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.-
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.-
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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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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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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Sadly? Disgustedly? Grow the fuck up.
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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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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.
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I normally like your posts, but this one is super douchey.
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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.
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"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."
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"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.-
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.-
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"?
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Actually, I remember this: http://abload.de/img/laaaagtap05lt6.gif
Low-latency indeed. It's still not fast enough for me. -
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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"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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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!-
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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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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Hahah, oh man, crying here.
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why the hell is it built into a camera when a microphone in the controller would have done the trick?
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WTF that works perfectly fine with the 360 mic.
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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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Because tinfoil feels so nice on the scalp
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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. -
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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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.-
I kinda want a minority report style interface, although ironically that movie is a privacy and civil rights nightmare.
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okay, I won't hold my breath.
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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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I wish Microsoft success with the facebook crowd then. I'll be elsewhere.
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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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yeah that's more in Leap Motion territory.
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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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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.
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Lol at "actual customers". So all the people who bought the original Kinect are imaginary customers?
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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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