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Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

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Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#171

Post by dwighttk »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #67

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 ou…

"hockey puck that can add things to your shopping list" sounds a whole lot better than "always-on video phone" which they are also competing to put on your shelf.

(and the hockey puck sounds pretty... pretty dumb)

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#172

Post by derptron »

prophesi wrote: post #160

It's a magnificent device for tinkerers. My workplace picked up a few Kinects when we needed a quick & cheap motion capture solution to animate a few characters in our Unity game. We were quite impressed by how well it did; it could even do facial capture! We still had to hand-tune some of the keyframes, but it saved us countless hours of animating. After getting all of our motion capture done, we wanted to see what…

I'd say it's a bit too heavy in general.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#173

Post by nsxwolf »

squarefoot wrote: post #118
Bjorkbat wrote: post #67

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 ou…

"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" This. And thanks to software/hardware patents, the technology will die with the product, or remain dormant until the owner will either decide to make something else with it or (not holding my breath) release it under a FOSS license. In the…

I don't think the maker community hanging on to their Kinects is going to put a dent in the e-waste impact. People are tossing these things in droves because they are a useless waste of space.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#174

Post by dwighttk »

bhouston wrote: post #105
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...

I'm pretty sure cheap and high quality lidar is coming very very quickly - so many companies working on it. There will be no market for an awkward kinect. Kinect is not great compared to modern lidar systems anyhow, it was just more accessible.

I thought I read Tesla got away from LIDAR because it won't be inexpensive enough for consumers any time soon.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#175

Post by CaptSpify »

Benjammer wrote: post #90
microcolonel wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ridiculously cheap cost I think that's the problem, I figure it was meant to increase XBox game licensing money, not turn a direct profit.

Isn't this the backbone of the entire console gaming industry though? Has there ever been a popular console that directly turned a profit through hardware sales? I was under the impression that basically the entire revenue stream comes from game licensing fees from publishers, with hardware as loss leaders across the board.

Weren't schools buying Playstations for a bit because they were cheaper than computers with similar specs?

I swear that was a thing for a while, but I can't find any sources, so I might be mis-remembering

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#176

Post by superbaconman »

Thetawaves wrote: post #139

Is there anything else that fills the voice recognition "xbox watch netflix" "xbox volume up" space? Going back to a physical remote feels like I just took a step back in time.

You can use the headset with Cortana for some things, though I'm not sure what all it can do.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#177

Post by kurthr »

ansgri wrote: post #138
nightski wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really even close. While two cameras is nice, is definitely not the same as the structured light approach in the Kinect.

FYI, front camera in X uses structural light, while Kinect 2 uses a more modern time-of-flight (ToF) technology, which delivers better depth resolution. From https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/ : "Face ID is enabled by the TrueDepth camera and is simple to set up. It projects and analyzes more than 30,000 invisible dots to create a precise depth map of your face."

Note that the depth resolution they are desscribing is 160x160=30,000, which is really standard structured light. Put a 1Mpix camera behind it and you can interpolate ~6 pixels in between to estimate depth/slope.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#178

Post by xanderstrike »

CaptSpify wrote: post #175
Benjammer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the backbone of the entire console gaming industry though? Has there ever been a popular console that directly turned a profit through hardware sales? I was under the impression that basically the entire revenue stream comes from game licensing fees from publishers, with hardware as loss leaders across the board.

Weren't schools buying Playstations for a bit because they were cheaper than computers with similar specs? I swear that was a thing for a while, but I can't find any sources, so I might be mis-remembering

Schools and governments were buying up PS3 systems because they could be turned into cheap clusters.

Sony didn't like this, as they were losing money on every PS3, so they disabled the functionality.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#179

Post by jedrek »

dcole2929 wrote: post #97
Benjammer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the backbone of the entire console gaming industry though? Has there ever been a popular console that directly turned a profit through hardware sales? I was under the impression that basically the entire revenue stream comes from game licensing fees from publishers, with hardware as loss leaders across the board.

Generally they are sold for a loss to begin with early in the generation. But later iterations usually make money. As a whole, successful consoles, usually can make money for the company producing them. That said both PS3 and Xbox 360 lost money for their respective companies. I believe the Wii and the PS2 however were great financial successes though.

Yeah, but the real money is in licensing.

Re: Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

#180

Post by skizm »

I assume they were selling this under cost in order to sell more games (software) which is where they make most of their money. Selling it as a standalone piece of tech would probably require a price hike ultimately making it less appealing and at the end of they day they probably projected they wouldn't move enough units to make it worth it.
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