| Zappykins said:
This is a dark day in gaming which takes me back to when Sega announced it would no longer be selling the DreamCast. Today Microsoft announced that they are offering an X1 without Kinect, thus ending their marriage of Console and Interactive Innovation. I see this as a fail to all of us gamers and consoles in general. New games, new innovation, are all being sacrificed. |
Kinect was an innovation - last generation, several years back. It soon prove to be less useful than most people expected after seeing the initial staged "Milo" demo. In the end, it faced the same fate as the Wii Remote: People were enthusiastic in the beginning, but lost interest very soon,
| Zappykins said: The original Xbox One with Kinect 2.0 pushed the boundaries of what a console can do and moved it a step towards the direction of a "Star Trek" level device. Where we can talk and communicate more naturally with our technology. It listens and responds. [...] Skyrim on the 360 is better with Kinect. It's more fun to be able to say your actual 'Dragon Shouts.' And not to mention the helpfulness of sorting by price, name or weight, merely by asking in your inventory. It opens up the game to new experiences. |
...and Microsoft would indeed be wise to replace the 100$ production cost Kinect with a 1$ production cost microphone on the Kinect-less model, thus enabling buyers of the new cheap model to still enjoy the voice recognition features that most people always clearly liked most about Kinect.
| Zappykins said: The original less fancy Kinect is being used in science, aviation and medicine for things that nobody thought it would. It does things its creators never realized. To allow doctors to touch-free manipulate medical records during surgery (thus no contamination), to researchers using it to capture structural changes from an ice flow or details of caves and fine art, and even as a 3d capture device for a flying robot and with added virtual and augmented reality. That's how tech works, you have something, and then figure out what to do with it - but you have to have it first. When the wire and later the nail were invented, I doubt anyone though that someday, they would be utilized to make a Cotton Gin. You have a tool first, then how to use it comes afterwards. |
That should make you wonder why people in "science, aviation and medicine" managed to come up with all those great ideas for distance sensing cameras since Kinect was introduced several years ago, but video game developers mostly miserably failed to come up interesting ideas, even though they were the first to get their hands on the Kinect and are by nature more aware of the existance of the technology than people in other fields.
I tell you why, and it's the same reason that I've said from the very start: Because the technology really is very interesting and useful in many areas of science/technology, but unfortunately, video games isn't one of them. The distance sensing camera is really great for a a few very specific areas in video games that video game developers instantly thought of (especially dance and fitness games), but rather useless in most other areas.
| Zappykins said: I remember when computer mice came out. |
Really? Wow, you must be much older than I though. What date are you referring to exactly? 1946 when the trackball was invented? 1962/63 when the first devices nowadays considered computer mice were invented? The "mother of all demos" in 1968? Or the first commerical computer mouse, also in 1968?
Now seriously: I actually do agree that it's not a good decision by Microsoft, but for a slightly different reason:
Kinect really was the one unique, stand-out feature that Xbox One had. Remove Kinect, and you have a console that costs exactly the same as PS4, but is considered to have weaker hardware, even if the difference may actually be rather small. Why would someone who isn't a fanboy or interested in a specific Xbox One exclusive title pick the Xbone? I see little reason...
To me, it would feel like choosing between 100$ in cash and a 100$ voucher from my favourite shop. The two would be almost exactly similar useful to me, but I would still pick the 100$, because my mind would tell me that the money still has a tiiiiny advantage over the other alternative.
