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Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

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Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#61

Post by chaostheory »

larrik wrote: 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…

> I bought it for my kids. Turns out, the Kinect is awful for kids.

What's sad is that it could have been great, if MS just put a little more dedication and effort towards it. The Kinect Sesame Street games had so much potential. Hopefully another company can do better. Could be wrong but I think Apple bought the company behind the original Kinect's technology

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#62

Post by lostgame »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #16

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.

>> Something like a Kinect mocap system would add bodily presence in the VR environment.

I personally spearheaded a couple of projects to make it work with the Vive in this way.

Unfortunately, the Kinect's tendency to screw up leg motion, SDK's and API's that read like an old grimoire of Black Magick and worked about just as well, as well as it's proprietary skeleton detection drivers, which prevented me from getting in and fixing a lot of these issues, which caused the company I worked for to drop it completely.

a focus on 'developers developers developers' could've really saved this thing.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#63

Post by grzm »

nikolay wrote: post #53

Really? You kill a product right after Apple released something similar on iPhone and glories it?

What Apple product/tech are you thinking of? The two off the top of my head are FaceID and ARKit, and both seem quite a stretch to me. I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#64

Post by cryptoz »

peterlk wrote: post #48
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a reason I am kind of surprised to see Microsoft just shut this down outright. Even as a much more limited run product, Kinect has so many possibilities in robotics and research, and it intersects with the VR/AR developments today.

I was talking to someone 3 days ago about how his company has been hoarding Kinects because they knew this day was coming. I think robotics research is probably a reason why they're discontinuing it. Why support something that only exists outside the walled garden? Maybe not the only reason, but a reason. The device probably isn't generating profits, and the value gain on top of that is missing because the gaming com…

Similar deal as Sony removing PS3 features after launch: people found a product they loved, for reasons not envisioned by Sony, who was then hell-bent on shutting it down.

Even though it seems like Sony's interest to foster a community of high-tech nerds interested in AI and parallel processing, and even though it seems like it's Microsoft's interest in fostering a community of robotics and computer vision nerds, it turns out the Giant Corporations need lock-down control on products and have no long-term vision for supporting ecosystems or communities.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#65

Post by emodendroket »

cryptoz wrote: post #64
peterlk wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking to someone 3 days ago about how his company has been hoarding Kinects because they knew this day was coming. I think robotics research is probably a reason why they're discontinuing it. Why support something that only exists outside the walled garden? Maybe not the only reason, but a reason. The device probably isn't generating profits, and the value gain on top of that is missing because the gaming com…

Similar deal as Sony removing PS3 features after launch: people found a product they loved, for reasons not envisioned by Sony, who was then hell-bent on shutting it down. Even though it seems like Sony's interest to foster a community of high-tech nerds interested in AI and parallel processing, and even though it seems like it's Microsoft's interest in fostering a community of robotics and computer vision nerds, it…

The main reason Sony killed OtherOS was that they began to think it could be used to circumvent copy protection for games. In Kinect's case I'm guessing the pricing was set at least in part with the idea that the games would make up for low-to-negative profit margins.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#66

Post by polpo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #40
robotresearcher wrote: post #38

The Kinect was a real boon for robotics research. A depth camera that worked pretty well, with skeleton extraction and directional audio? And the price is what!? My lab still uses a first gen Kinect regularly. Thanks to Jamie Shotton and the team for a sensor that made a difference to an incidental community. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/body-part-rec...

This is actually a reason I am kind of surprised to see Microsoft just shut this down outright. Even as a much more limited run product, Kinect has so many possibilities in robotics and research, and it intersects with the VR/AR developments today.

Occipital still produces the Structure Sensor [1], which uses similar technology to the 1st generation Kinect. They've also recently introduced the Structure Core [2], a new generation, miniaturized depth sensor designed to be embedded into anything that needs that kind of sensing.

[1] https://structure.io

[2] https://structure.io/core

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#67

Post by Bjorkbat »

This is a shame. I mean, yeah, it was a pretty awkward gaming accessory, but outside the context of gaming people were doing some pretty fun things with it. A powerful sensor at a ridiculously cheap cost that you could use to create amazing things, provided of course your imagination wasn't weighed down by the latest dumb tech trend. That last statement is just as true now as it was when the Kinect originally came out.

Gives me some strange feels about the current state of the tech economy. The Kinect is being retired at the same time Amazon and Google are caught up in a dumb contest to see who can produce the best hockey-puck-sized speaker that can add items to your shopping list. As overwhelmingly large as tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are, they seem mostly resigned to following trends, as opposed to creating new ones.

Don't forget, smartwatches originated from a highly successful Kickstarter campaign. Same can be said for VR. Bitcoin, and blockchain by extension, originated from a white paper published by someone who's still to this day a complete mystery.

Tech giants are very much capable of generating cash, but are damned by their inability to create gold.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#68

Post by zabuni »

cwyers wrote: post #39
Retric wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XBox is missing several exclusives like Uncharted 4, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and Persona 5 so there are plenty of games on just one system. IMO, if you have both then it might not seem like a big deal but PS4 seems to have better exclusives and it's consistently selling 2x as much. It's also at 1/3 as many sales as the Xbox 360 so 'dead' may be over rated but it's not in a great place.

I have bought and played all of those games, and they're good games. 2017 has been a better year for PS4 exclusives than Xbox One, although maybe I just feel that way because I like the Forza Horizon games more than the Forza Motorsport games and I suck at Cuphead. There's still plenty of Xbox One exclusives that I'm happy I've played.

It doesn't help that Microsoft cancelled a large amount of their second party titles like Scalebound.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#69

Post by wmkn »

grzm wrote: post #63
nikolay wrote: post #53

Really? You kill a product right after Apple released something similar on iPhone and glories it?

What Apple product/tech are you thinking of? The two off the top of my head are FaceID and ARKit, and both seem quite a stretch to me. I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

Years ago Apple bought the company, PrimeSense, that developed the technology for the first generation Kinect (the one based on IR structured light). From the description Apple gave of FaceID during the keynote I'm pretty certain that FaceID is pretty much Kinect in an iPhone.

Of course the application of it is totally different.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#70

Post by Vekz »

grzm wrote: post #63
nikolay wrote: post #53

Really? You kill a product right after Apple released something similar on iPhone and glories it?

What Apple product/tech are you thinking of? The two off the top of my head are FaceID and ARKit, and both seem quite a stretch to me. I feel like I’m missing something obvious.

The iPhoneX has essentially a mini Kinect sensor set built into the infamous "black notch" at the top which powers FaceID
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