Kinect

[Don Carlos]

A revolution or will it be a huge failure?

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/06/13/kinec ... usa-today/

[Mat Linnett]

Dunno about anyone else, but the novelty of motion-controlled gaming has already worn thin on me.
I also suspect that without a "Killer App", this'll go the way of many console optional hardware upgrades, like the Sega 32x.
And from a business standpoint, as a development house, which would you make? A game that has a potential 100% attach rate, or one that will only work with hardware less than 50% of the installed user base are likely to have?

[Psyche911]

You're thinking about it all wrong. It doesn't matter if it's a success for this generation of games. It's a new interface technology, and development on it will continue both by Microsoft and other companies.

We've been using controllers of some sort since what, Pong in 1972? Thirty eight years and our interaction with electronic entertainment devices (this will be used for more than just video games) hasn't changed. The Wii control scheme was a stepping stone. It brought a new control method to the mass market, but to go truly controlerless is something very different, IMHO.

Has it never bothered you how limiting a mouse and keyboard or controller is? This will let developers create an enormous variety of control schemes tailored specifically for their gameplay instead of having to build a game around a controller. If it's a flop this generation, who cares. I'm surprised we didn't see more development in voice recognition first, but I'm sure that will come along in time.

Next up is direct control using only our mind! Someday...

[morguen87]

Sounds cool, but I also heard a rumor that it's going to cost $150 - if that's the case, well, fuck that.

edit: that website doesn't have any release info, but I also heard it's slotted for November....which means I'll probably have to wait until the following Christmas for a price drop.

[Eraser]

It'll be overrated. Controlling a first person shooter with nothing but your body sounds like a cool idea, but I think that in practice it won't work at all.

Many people have been saying things like that they want to relax playing games instead of doing intensive moments with their arms when the Wii's motion control was first revealed. That statement is pretty ill founded in the case of the Wii, but with Natal - excuse me, Kinect - it might become true.

[MKJ]

clearly im not part of the demographic.
nifty tech, tho.

more interesting is the rumoured new 360 model, with built in wifi. finally ey.

[Grandpa Stu]

for this gen it'll struggle taking off but as mentioned before it's a whole new tech that'll get refined and improved as time goes on. i think the biggest problem is it's current focus towards gaming. no peripherals means no tactile feedback of any kind. you also start to run into problems of precision. with a piece of hardware it's easy to hard code an analogue stick to various degrees of intensity because you always know the limitations on movement for that device. say you're trying to figure out how to change something like speed. on a stick/button you have predefined min/max positions. how would you actually precisely map that to body movement and actually make it good?

i think it's biggest strength and potential lies in user interface interactions and not actual entertainment.

[Eraser]

i think it's biggest strength and potential lies in user interface interactions and not actual entertainment.

This man speaks wisdom.
I was thinking of this as well and intended to write about it. I think it'll work pretty well with the NXE interface in a Minority Report hand waving kind of way.

[brisk]

http://kotaku.com/5562639/get-a-look-at ... -wars-game

the force is so strong with kinect, the game moves before the human. gotta love staged presentations!

[Eraser]

[Don Carlos]

Oh dear

[brisk]

i love the faggy little starjump at the end too... maybe that switches kinect off?

[o'dium]

Christ, what a complete balls up... Horrible name (What was wrong with Wave? Or even Natal?), then a terrible fake star wars video that was so obviously fake it was laughable, and then the piss poor attempt at a "slim" 360 redesign which looks disgusting...

Your move sony, but I wouldnt be too worried...

[Don Carlos]

FU - New 360 is lovely

[brisk]

New 360 is fine, even if it is 5 years or so too late with the wi-fi. Design looks decent enough.

The rest of the MS E3 presentation was dire as fuck though. Nintendo will probably steal the show with their new portable this year, though I hope Sony has some new exclusives to announce.

[brisk]

Oh the new 360 apparently operates near-silently too, which is long overdue. My new-ish 360 runs reasonably quiet from the HDD, but it's still not a patch on the PS3, which is genuinely near-silent for me.

[Don Carlos]

http://www.joystiq.com/screenshots/xbox-360-slim#/0

In case anyone is wondering what o'dium is wrong about

[Eraser]

The hourglass shape is brilliant. It allows for heat dissipation through the bottom. I'm not a big fan of it's glossy surface but it looks decent enough.

[Eraser]

Here's an on stage demo of Forza 3 with Kinect: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-20 ... ect/101303
(video might take a while to load, looks like GameTrailers is being hammered right now)

Now what I don't understand is that they got head tracking in there. If you look to the left, the camera turns to the left as well. But when I'm turning my head to the left, I'm no longer actually looking at the screen, am I?

The problem with this (and the "walking around the car" demonstration clearly illustrates this) is that there's always a layer of imagination between it. They want to make it possible for you to walk around the car. But you're not. You're standing still in front of your TV. When you're looking closer at the car, you're not moving towards the car. You're bending over and the camera zooms in. While Kinect can do 1:1 body movement tracking (or so they say), it's not like your actions translate to in-game actions 1:1. They never will. And that's the problem people are experiencing with the Wii as well. They expect it to take over your movements 1:1, but even the sword fighting in Red Steel 2 is a translation of your gestures to in-game actions. It never allows you to interact with the virtual world 1:1, there's always a limited set of movements that are translated to in-game events.

Also, I'm not exactly confident that this type of input method gives the fine control and feedback you need for racing games like these.

[Transient]

I'm still against the whole motion control idea of the Wii and Kinect, and every demo Microsoft shows makes me like it less and less. WTF is so special about that video that can't be done with the analog sticks of the regular controller? And yes, there's no way in hell that Kinect will be able to replicate the precision of a controller for steering a car.

[morguen87]

The progress is cool, though. This is more than likely the future of gaming...we're just stuck in a little ugly experimentation stage.

[Κracus]

Actualy guys this tech is pretty cool. At first I was like whatever this is another wii gimick and I ain't buying it.

However, the Forza demo has really turned me around on this. See the movement is exagerated, so you can move your head slightly left and right and you get to see where you're looking, your eyes still stay fixed in front so you're still seeing the TV.

However, if you incorporate that to a pair of glasses... well, you can see where this becomes more of a virtual reality than anything else.

Also I could see this being cool in an FPS. I'm no fan of standing up pretending to shoot people but if I could sit on my ass and play an FPS and my head movement is tracked then THAT would be pretty damn nifty in conjunction with kintect. So it's not so much that it's an alternate input device but rather it's a great tool as an adition to the controller that already exists.

Also, imagine a mechwarrior game that uses a large plastic controller that has no actual functional buttons. Kinect could see what buttons you push then relay it to the xbox making complex and expensive controlers a moot point. YOu could have people play with what appears to be an expensive 60 button controler (like the one for steel batallion that I owned for 350$) but instead it's empty plastic so the controler could be sold for cheap, like 20-50$ and all the functionality of it is in the programing using kinect.

I could go on and on about the possibilities but it's not a bad idea from what Is ee.

[shaft]

Kinect will be shit for anything other than gimmick stuff designed specifically for it. how do you adjust speed on racing? or quickly access inventory or pause, or shoot? You need BUTTONS.


PlayStation Move looks the best out of the 3.

[Transient]

I don't know about you, Kracus, but I don't want unintentional turns of my head, say, talking to someone near me, to alter my view in the game.

[Doombrain]

Move > Kinect - Gaming
Kinect > Move - Lifestyle