TL/DR but it seems extremely weird to me Kinect is not everywhere. It seems an obvious convenience everybody should and would want to use, like a wheel.
All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
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Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#42A lot of these devices seem great for sales and hype, but kind of irritating once you get to using them.
Speech recognition is something people always react positively to in a demo, but it gets irritating quite quickly, and can be annoying to people around you.
With the Wii mote they seemed careful to also support more conventional button controls, which meant you could often just switch to that.
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#43I saw this headline and thought, "what was the Kinect, some kind of VR headset?" Then I opened the article, and saw the picture, and thought, "oh that looks familiar." Gosh, I totally forgot about that thing. [Edit] As in, I once picked up a VR Boy on the cheap when I was a kid. It was really fun, but the games were sorely lacking. I wonder if anyone really enjoyed the Kinect.
I enjoyed it as a super cheap depth camera, and never used it for gaming.
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#44Kinect was a political casualty, not a market one. There's no reason for it not to still exist (as an addon) save that they stopped manufacturing it.
I think it was mishandled. There was a lack of compelling software, particularly when compared to Nintendo’s Wii output that also relied on motion controls.
Then the next revision was included with the Xbox One, increasing the overall price of the console while still lacking compelling software.
If Microsoft had positioned it as an entirely optional accessory with a great library of exclusive titles, maybe it would have found an audience.
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but the early backlash and signaling from Microsoft probably scared off a lot of developers. A lot of mistakes were made. The costs were also a big factor. Perhaps the flaws with the tech were insurmountable. I can't help but believe with the same opportunity, using a different approach to market and promote the technology, it would have become a stable accessory with a very big customerbase. I've had many discus…
Those consoles already existed, the Wii and Wii U, Nintendo moved away from the whole idea. It's a good idea in theory but it didn't catch on and realistically kids just aren't a big enough market to concentrate on in the context of gaming, the average gamer is in their 30's and has a ton of disposable income, those are who the console manufacturers are targetting. If you do want a console for kids, well the Switch e…
Nintendo integrated some ideas from the Wii into the Switch though, and the whole console market expects to constantly move on to new platforms and new generations of technology.
So while individual consoles can be market successes or failures in their day, the ideas introduced by various consoles are much harder to score.
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#46Around that time, it looked like a lot of innovation was happening in input devices. There was Kinect. But there was also the Wii, 6 degrees of freedom controllers, and others I'm forgetting about. But it mostly sort of petered out.
The Switch controllers have an infrared depth tracking sensor, which has some neat uses in Nintendo Labo. But like the WiiMote, I don't expect many games to take advantage of it.
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#47TL/DR but it seems extremely weird to me Kinect is not everywhere. It seems an obvious convenience everybody should and would want to use, like a wheel.
Well, I don't think I own "a wheel". I own stuff that happens to include wheels. What would those be for the Kinect, besides games?
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#48I will never forget the first time I went to a friends house and saw the Kinect. Of course I asked for a demo, and my friend proceeded to play a volleyball game, within about a minute he jumped in the air to spike the ball...his hand went right into the ceiling fan. It seemed like amazing technology before/during/after the demo, but I never even bothered trying it after witnessing that.
The same problem exists in VR, except in VR you're blind to the outside world. The chaperone boundary partially solves this, but every VR forum is full of pictures of smashed TVs. In spite of this, the tech is gaining momentum. (Not to mention, it has been life changing for me personally in so many ways.) I don't think this alone is a valid criticism of full body tracking systems.
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Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#49All you need to know about Kinect is in this video, 'Kinect GEL Ride' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo
Re: All the money in the world couldn’t make Kinect happen
#50IMO the main reason for why the kinect failed was because gamers tend to not be in good physical shape and are not exercise-motivated, to put it kindly. Exercise games on the Wii worked because of the audience of that platform (casual gamers who are generally fitter than "hardcore" console gamers).
Wii sports would have failed on Xbox, and Kinect adventures would have worked well enough on the Wii.