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Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

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Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#22
post #8
post #3

Reliance on Kinect and always online killed the Xbox One. Sure, they backpedaled but it was too late. They really messed up.

The Xbox One is hardly dead, though.

Xbox line has always lost MS money (even back in the glory days of the 360) and Xbox One has lagged way behind PS4 since it launched. "Dead" was an exaggeration, I admit. But it has mediocre if not poor sales.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#24
post #3

Reliance on Kinect and always online killed the Xbox One. Sure, they backpedaled but it was too late. They really messed up.

Their advertisement summing to "look at all those awesome extra features that you'll never use because they are US-only!" while at same time Sony advertised with "for the players" focus and solid, LOCALISED exclusives didn't do them any favors outside of US either.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#25

Most unfortunate. I was hoping to see the technology applied to VR. One of my complaints/observations about VR is that you are a disembodied viewpoint in the VR environment. Something like a Kinect mocap system would add bodily presence in the VR environment.

I think the technology (basically structured light / ToF) is and will be implemented in many tech, like the Hololens, but also in the iPhone X (Apple bought Primesense which created the first Kinect). I think we will still see that technology in many products to come.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#26
> "Why press a button to duck, when you can just duck?"

Why sit on your arse and turn a steering wheel when you can just run forty miles to work?

When someone says "Why do X when you can just do Y?" its usually because "just doing Y" is simpler or easier. Turns out that ducking is neither simpler, nor easier.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#27
post #5

I remember the Milo demo. The mix of overpromise and under-delivery is astonishingly consistent.

There was a, um, Molyneux effect to consider there too.

And how about the Longhorn concept from 2003?

It took years for the rest of the market to catch up to that and Windows 10 is still not quite up there.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#28
post #3

Reliance on Kinect and always online killed the Xbox One. Sure, they backpedaled but it was too late. They really messed up.

Positioning at introduction is what hobbled the Xbox One -- we mostly forget it now, but while the PS4 was introduced as a gaming device -- all about the games and for gamers -- the Xbox One was introduced as a cable pass-thru device with augmented TV watching, a smart livingroom, an NFL experience, etc. The gaming seemed almost ancillary, and of course classic television was dying (especially among the target market) so a smart TV guide hardly was compelling.

It was just a massive misstep, and was years too late for its focus. They've regrouped but the PS4 has retained the lead from that early head-start.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#29

Most unfortunate. I was hoping to see the technology applied to VR. One of my complaints/observations about VR is that you are a disembodied viewpoint in the VR environment. Something like a Kinect mocap system would add bodily presence in the VR environment.

There are open-source projects to allow a Vive to leverage Kinect motion tracking. And HTC is developing a full body motion tracker.

These are solutions I found when looking into leg sensors for a Taekwondo VR training game. I feel we're approaching a technology intersection between self-driving cars and VR, in the need to map physical spaces and the objects therein. I keep waiting for someone to bring in eTemplate laser scanning tech to bridge the gap, but nobody has. I fear most people see these as entirely separate domains with little overlap.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#30
post #7

This makes me sad, because my experience with my own Kinect (360) was very much a "this could be awesome if it wasn't burdened with stupid crap". I bought it for my kids. Turns out, the Kinect is awful for kids. They were far too little for the Kinect to properly see them, and the motions to actually use it were super fussy. Then if I walked in to try to help them, the Kinect would freak out that there was a new pers…

If you had a large enough dedicated room (I used most of a basement once, with a lot of setup work to give the Kinect the view of just about the whole room) and the right games (some games were less fiddly if multiple people/gestures were recognized that others [1]; though a lot of the management of it is still taking turns and having patience) it was sort of magic to watch particularly young kids play with the Kinect.

Especially then it seemed like a glimpse into a future of where the technology could go, and though that magic was sometimes finicky, it was still magic when it worked.

[1] Kinectimals (essentially a "cat petting" simulator) I recall particularly launching for my youngest cousins to enjoy. There were others, but that's the first to mind; this was a couple years back at a holiday party where most of this happened.

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