why Kinect will never succeed

[cspacefan]

So my office building has an XBox 360 with Kinect and they thought it would be fun to play Kinect Sports Rivals in the auditorium. One of my fellow I.T. guys just called me to help him figure out how to launch a game because he can't figure it out.

What does that say about how intuitive Kinect is that a Desktop Support Technician can't figure out how to launch a game?

 

[ThunderBunny]

That my 6 year old is a genius?

 

[priglmeier]

Wii

Nintendo had a better idea by having hand controllers and motion.
You can play games that require or work better with physical buttons.
Unfortunately, they aren't using the same stuff anymore...

 

[vipe155]

say about how intuitive Kinect is that a Desktop Support Technician can't figure out how to launch a game?

Hmm...maybe Desktop Support isn't the best place for him to be then?

 

[Lanky Kong]

Well he is a desktop support technician not a console support technician I suppose.

 

[indecks]

Most IT guys aren't very smart. I've worked with lots of them as an IT guy myself.

Most don't know anything other than "reboot." That's not even a joke.

 

[DimeV333]

Kinect will never succeed because Microsoft lied about the way it was supposed to work.
I don't know if anyone remembers or not but that E3 show they debuted the Kinect at showed them doing all sorts of cool things that you will never be able to do, also I will never forget what they did to Tony Hawk the look on his face was priceless more on that after I explain the lies microsoft told everyone.

First off you were supposed to be able to scan things with the kinect and use them inside the game. Wow sounds awesome right? Yeah also apparently unattainable for the cost they projected. I remember their kinect demo having people hold up baseball bats and everything else and letting the kinect scan it and then it was being used in the game.

In comes the Tony Hawk priceless face, he was up after the Kinect demo to show his fancy new skateboard controller that flopped horribly. The reason his face looked so in disbelief is because they just showed the kinect scanning a skateboard and then using it in whatever game they were playing, that's a nice kick in the teeth lol.

Plagued by lighting requirements, and the fact that it was aimed at children even though any child under the age of 12 wouldn't even be recognized by the damn thing made it even worse for the kinect. The whole E3 conference is on YouTube somewhere I'm sure and you have to see it just for toy's face not to mention how bad Microsoft lied to the potential buyers of the hardware. Screw you Microsoft! !!!!

 

[twistedsymphony]

...
First off you were supposed to be able to scan things with the kinect and use them inside the game. Wow sounds awesome right? Yeah also apparently unattainable for the cost they projected. I remember their kinect demo having people hold up baseball bats and everything else and letting the kinect scan it and then it was being used in the game.
...

Actually that's incorrect: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/P...acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258480812?nosplash=1

^ MS released an app that lets you 3D scan any item into a 3D in-game object that you can interact with. The Kinect was capable of it, but not very many developers made use of the feature. Only a few games that I can think of let you scan your face to map onto an in-game character but most didn't bother with Kinect features because the market saturation was so low.

--------

Discussing Kinect is worthless at this point because MS has all but officially dropped it as an accessory. It's no longer bundled with the Xbox One and they've canceled most of the upcoming Kinect specific games. Kinect is already dead, complaining about it now is just beating a dead horse.

 

[DimeV333]

Releasing an app later on doesn't make me wrong. They said it would be like that out of the gate, hell that was their whole marketing strategy and then you say that's incorrect how exactly? They knew what they were doing when they put on that charade and that fact that even games made by Microsoft studios that only made games for the kinect didn't allow that option only further proves my statement. Not trying to be a dick or whatever but I was there during the launch of it lol.

You are correct though it's pointless to rip on it now but that doesn't take away from the fun of ripping on it lol.

 

[twistedsymphony]

You said it was "unattainable for the cost they projected" ..I showed you that they did indeed attain that functionality in the production product. Just because an app with this functionality was released ~6 months after the device doesn't mean the device wasn't capable of that out of the gate.

 

[DimeV333]

Come on man the cost thing wasn't your point now you are back peddling and if cost wasn't an issue why weren't developers using that feature again? Because it cost too much to make the friggin games, the fact is it didn't work the way Microsoft said it would even 5 years later PERIOD.

 

[HunterZero]

Nintendo had a better idea by having hand controllers and motion.
You can play games that require or work better with physical buttons.
Unfortunately, they aren't using the same stuff anymore...

Nintendo had it right - from a marketing perspective anyway. The problem was that motion controls just weren't really used very much. The Wii Sports titles and Boom Blox were about the only Wii titles where motion control was the best way to play. Otherwise, they just tacked on motion inputs to some games that added not a lot to the game, and could have just been mapped to button presses or analogue thumbstick controls. Eg, the flick in Mario Kart Wii to do stunts off jumps.

The gimmick of motion control was enough to sell the Wii, but the novelty has worn off. The Wii U isn't doing so well.

The Kinect has the same fundamental problems. It's good for sports games where you don't have to run about like dancing (Dance Central is actually pretty good tech), boxing, golf or bowling (or ninja slicing), but hopeless for anything else. The worst part of the 360 Kinect was the control input delay - it was awful for anything that required precision timing and control. It's far better just to use a controller for 99% of games.

- J

 

[twistedsymphony]

Come on man the cost thing wasn't your point now you are back peddling...

backpedaling? lol exactly what did I say in my first post that I invalidated in my second?