Is the Kinect boost to the Xbox 360 an illusion?

[d21lewis]

daroamer said:

d21lewis said:

adsl said:

 

The funny thing about the "500 million" advertisement campaign is that MS probably have spent more than 1 billion to develop the hardware and software behind Kinect but no one says anything about it (even MS).

About 360 sales,I believe that the new model, plus games like Halo Reach and Fable III have been helping the salesas (maybe as much as Kinet).

About Wii sales, it is simple: no new games means no hardware sales this is Wii is down YoY.

Nah.  From what I understand, some other organization came up with the technology and Microsoft just aquired them.....I don't know how much that aquisition cost, though.

No, that's a common misconception.  Microsoft is using the 3D depth camera developed by Primesense but there is a LOT of Microsoft technology in Kinect.  They expanded and greatly improved on the work the Primesense did as well as doing all the work on the other aspects of the unit like the voice recognition, facial recognition etc.  The technology that MS uses to get the voice recognition working in a myriad of situations is extremely advanced stuff and is also built on their voice recognition software that has been in Windows for years.  The acquisition you're thinking of was another depth camera developer 3DV.  They don't own Primesense though.

Here is a good article on the development of Kinect - http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2010/11/features/the-game-changer

Thanks Flint!  Now we know--and knowing is half the battle.  Now let's jump our dirt bikes over that downed power line!