Kinect in every box still splits the market for 3rd parties.

Why does everyone say "If you dont include Kinect you will split the audience" ? It makes no sense, the audience is ALREADY SPLIT by mere fact that the games come out for PS4 as well, PS4 has no Kinect. Yes there are exclusives, but any 100% kinect game is as gimmicky as the WiiU tablet.

My point here is that Kinect even being in every box, most of the time will be as useless as a "Honk" button on Mario Kart WiiU tablet... Do we really expect any one of 3rd party titles that are coming out for both PS4 and X-bOneEighty to have unique features to utilize Kinect that are not simple, hey Billy we have this game coming out, why dont you spend a day coming up with things to tack on for Kinect?

Most of the games are 3rd party games, for them even with Kinect in every box the priority is to make it an amazing experience without Kinect (otherwise they wouldnt be able to sell to those without Kinect) AKA PS4 owners, and as of right now it seems like PS4 will have a larger market share (unless PS4's wheels fall off the bus before November).

An easy path would be to make the same game but with voice commands. Both Skyrim and Dance Central were early examples of the tech that improved gameplay and worked incredibly well.

I know people are reluctant to look like a fool talking to their screen but seriously saying "SWORD! SHIELD! HEAL!" really was kind of easier than pausing, equiping heal, unpausing, healing, pausing, and equiping your sword and shield". Plus, having every Dragonshout* available without equiping? Forget about it.

(*I will admit that I my Dragontongue is horrible, and that I had to set it to English)

I just don't think the Kinect has ever been for 3rd party, cross platform games. Microsoft has always been hoping that it would catch on Wii style and break the console out to all those Mums and Dads.

At best the Kinect for 3rd party will be as in the previous generation in that it will be things like voice commands in Mass Effect and menu manipulation.

That said I really hope someone comes up with something that is interesting on a gameplay level, rather than a technical one for the Kinect because it is an interesting piece of kit and seems much improved in this interation.

Stop Drinking Mercury, have you seen the line up for kinect2? Have you used Kinect 2 to play a game? Dance Central aint gimmicky it's called a damn good time (sounds douchey), and this coming from a person that knows Kinect 1 is garbage. A different way to play a game is not a bad thing just because you hate it. Oculus Rift? is that gimmiky, not all 3rd party games will use it. Now go cash in your check you shill.

Why does everyone say "If you dont include Kinect you will split the audience" ? It makes no sense, the audience is ALREADY SPLIT by mere fact that the games come out for PS4 as well, PS4 has no Kinect. Yes there are exclusives, but any 100% kinect game is as gimmicky as the WiiU tablet.

My point here is that Kinect even being in every box, most of the time will be as useless as a "Honk" button on Mario Kart WiiU tablet... Do we really expect any one of 3rd party titles that are coming out for both PS4 and X-bOneEighty to have unique features to utilize Kinect that are not simple, hey Billy we have this game coming out, why dont you spend a day coming up with things to tack on for Kinect?

Most of the games are 3rd party games, for them even with Kinect in every box the priority is to make it an amazing experience without Kinect (otherwise they wouldnt be able to sell to those without Kinect) AKA PS4 owners, and as of right now it seems like PS4 will have a larger market share (unless PS4's wheels fall off the bus before November).

Wha? But Jonnny V didn't even post in here?

They finally evolved music?? I'm on board, need dat kinect!

There are 3rd party games that use the Wii U screen but do not for other consoles. So even if it is a cross-platform game does not mean they could not create optional Kinect features of the game.

I like apples.

I feel like Kinect has a lot of potential that gets wasted on cheap shovelware games and gimmicks. It would be interesting if an AI system were developed around the Kinect where you could respond to NPC's in the game via your voice or body. For example you could wave your hand to get a distant NPC's attention, or ask them questions with your voice among other things.

Yes, but how many of those are meaningful? From my experience its mostly menus, and it does not really "add" to the experience.

Let me put it this way... would you rather have the console for $100 cheaper, or get these gimmicky tack ons?

Yeah in the age of almost no 3rd party exclusives a pack-in kinect seems like a bad business move. Unless you consider all the advantages to MS and publishers of having a pack-in, always-on camera.

Well it looks like the PS4 Eye will almost have parity with the new kinect, so third party developers with the means to build something cross-platform will likely be able to design for features that will take advantage of the camera/microphone in a more focused way than the previous generation.

@professoress: I hear where you're coming from on Skyrim but to be fair those problems could have been solved just as easily by better UI and inventory design. I would argue that including voce commands is an overly complex solution to a simple problem

You are putting in way too much effort to just say Xbox.

But that's kind of the OPs point, right? Kinect features will have to be optional and not core to the experience--at least when it concerns multiplatform titles.

Kinect is Xbox One's DS microphone.

Could be optional or not. Now that the developer knows that every Xbox One will have a Kinect then it is their choice to make it optional or not. It could be a marketing that this additional feature only found on Xbox One for example.

The funniest thing about all this is that Kinect has yet to prove itself as an actual game play device.

Well, I think it's funny.

Problem being that if it is core to the experience than the game can not come out on PS4, that effectively splits the market. So putting Kinect in the box or not putting it in the box splits the market either way.

@reisz: I take issue with the idea that Skyrim's UI problems would be fixed 'just as easy' with better UI. You've left out the part where 'just make it better' is incredibly difficult. Can you think of a way to use a controller to filter through menus and options that is easier than saying a word out loud? It makes using the controller seem the 'overly complicated' part.

I agree with you, but thats a perfect scenario, in reality Kinect cant understand you sometimes, and you find yourself repeatedly yelling like an r-tard at your TV. While yes, Kinect "improves" the experience, it is far from making a big difference, its just as easy (if not easier) to just map the 4 spells or whatever that you constantly use to your D-pad and play that way, and D-pad works 100% of the time (unlike Kinect).

I don't really see the problem. Personally, I don't want a Kinect but it's not like motion control is going to take any sort of precedence in the next-gen gaming market. It's kind of cool how you can move through menus and if it's as fast as it was shown on stage during E3, then I'm down. Otherwise, just turn off all those settings.

Problem being is that MS and everyone preaches that X-Bone is $100 more because they "HAVE TO" include Kinect in every box, otherwise the market will be split... point here is that its split either way. If they take out Kinect, they could lower the price of the console.

In fact if we assume Kinect is $150 (as the original launched) they could do $500-$150 = $349.99 for the console.... they would be back in the game!

@duxa: Oh I'm not saying the fucker works I'm just saying that voice commands are actually a pretty elegant design choice rather than filters and menus.

@duxa: I think developers will just program the basic functions of their game to work with the main controls, and everything else that doesn't fit will be made to work with Kinect on Xbox One, and the touchpad on PS4. Without Kinect, the extra controls on the PS4 would be a huge advantage to Sony. For an example, think about how the SNES had six buttons, and the genesis had three.

The extra functionality is there for both systems, it's just that one uses a touchpad and one uses a camera. Take that camera out of the equation, and you're selling a gamepad with three buttons while your opponent is selling a gamepad with six.

If you include a Kinect in every box you ensure every Xbox One owner has a Kinect. So when a third party has to decide if they should create a Kinect game or not, they can be ensured that for every Xbox there is a potential buyer for their game. Otherwise you need to then sell both the hardware and then a game to the consumer rather than just a game. Also if you have a Kinect already aren't you more inclined to buy a game for it? Might as well right? Especially if it's something you're interested in.

Well maybe once games that are "Better with Kinect" aren't just using it as a glorified mic maybe it will catch some traction. In my experience the camera didn't offer enough fidelity and control to work for any meaningful gameplay experiences. Which is why you get nothing but shovel-ware shit for games.

@brodehouse: I play Skyrim on PC with a Dualshock 3. Those problems were all solved within weeks of the games launch. I have an ideal setup with both an improved menu layout and better control over those menus with a gamepad than shipped in the game. The method for translating the hotkeys present on PC was a very quick two button macro function on the controller, faster and much more reliable than saying it out loud.

It was absoloutely an easy fix. The community came up with it almost immediately. It's a testament to the way that game was built that it could be implemented so quickly.

I always found the "better with Kinect" tag line funny when the only difference is voice commands, since voice commands can be accomplished with a headset. It's been done before. So what you might end up having is Microsoft chipping in on marketing to use that line.

Honestly, kinect is just ridiculous at this point. The purpose was to imitate the wii's success and get the casual market, but the price was way to high for anybody who didn't already have a 360. The reason the wii was successful early was it was cheap and gimmicky, kinect is just gimmicky. So the functionality of the kinect really boils down to ways to minipulate the user interface (hand gestures, voice) not gaming. The games aside from dance central are pretty much novelty acts with no value to anybody. Forcing a 500$ fee just alienates both markets, and doesn't service either one in any practical way. Casual gamers want quick and cheap, they'll just buy games on their phone. Hardcore gamers want the best gaming experience, adding the price of kinect takes away from the money spent on the actual gaming hardware so it ends up being less powerful than it's competition.

I mean, to be honest, it seems early on they'll have to really rely on "fanboys" and "fangirls" to push the system until they can drop the price to something reasonable. IMO anyway

I assume the new playstation 4 camera does roughly the same thing as the kinect.

So 3rd party devs can sell their "kinect" games to all xbox one owners and some ps4 owners.

Dance Central, Fruit Ninja, and Wreckateer all used Kinect and played extremely well. That's my experience, at least.

By deciding to make the game for Kinect with Xbox One will eliminate that game from being released on PS4. This is as suicidal of a move as releasing a game right now just for the Wii U. No one will cut their potential buyer numbers in half (or maybe even more), so packing Kinect in with every Xbox One doesnt really make a difference. Developers are going to develop games that work equally well on both platforms, and then shovel in a few gimmicks for Kinect, they can not possibly make anything Kinect related have any real meaning, otherwise the game would be unplayable on PS4.

Yeah but the op point was "If you dont include Kinect you will split the audience" ? argument was invalid since ps4 titles and most off the kinect stuff would be optional why have it a pack in?

Some games will be designed around it, but not many you'll want to play. If they can figure out cool (not totally forced) ways to work it into regular games, that could be interesting. And it's a lot more likely that developers will put that effort in if every X1 owner has one.

I'm definitely interested if new Kinect (K2?) is accurate enough to do TrackIR style headtracking to a reasonable standard. A gameplay trailer along the lines of those early Arma 2 ones would make a hell of a case for Kinect.

I don't think you understand what MS is getting at.

All developers want to do is make money. They don't necessarily care about making games for "everyone". If Kinect proves popular, which it already has, and enough people have the units, developers will develop for it. So MS goal is to get as many units in the hands of users as possible.

Done.

It doesn't matter WHAT sony is doing.

I doubt it. MS has been researching and patenting the crap out of Kinect technology. I think they even have more broad plans for it beyond just xbox.

Sony's camera won't do what Kinect does, I don't believe. I don't think they really care that much.

I dont think any 3rd party will cut their potential sales in half (or more). Anyone with any business sense will develop for least common denominator. If SONY doesnt mess it all up (and MS doesnt pull an Ace out from their sleeve), they will be ahead on console sales, and a few years down the road when there are 30 million Xbox Ones out there, and 40 million PS4s, no sane developer will say, its ok we are going to sell to 30 million potential customers instead of 70 million. That would be incredibly stupid. Sure Microsoft can pay them 50 million dollars to cover those potential sales losses... but who is winning at that point? And how likely is MS to do that? They cant afford to do that with 10+ titles every single year thats billions they dont have.

And I think we can all agree that the age of exclusives died long ago, now its the age of timed exclusive DLC.

So yes, it does very much matter what Sony is doing.. just to give an extreme example. Some rumors floating around (Garnet Lee as source from last week's podcast) it was 8 to 1 ratio of PS4's to Xbox Ones.. (im sure the ratio is better now post the Xbox180, but I said this is an extreme example)... so if Sony keeps it up, developing a game with Kinect at its centerpiece would mean throwing away 7 out of 8 potential buyers... that suicide. Therefore developers will be forced to develop games that work on both platforms, and not all platforms have Kinect.

Kinect would only work in a "One Console" ecosystem... but that will never happen, even if Sony and Nintendo folds, PC will keep the pillars up... and if there is only 1 player in the market there will be a lot of others trying to jump into the fray... Steambox, apple, samsung?

I want the system for Dance Central. Like, really.

This technology has always been a better idea for phones and TVs than consoles. I'm continually confused why this stuff hasn't made it into Windows Phone where there are a number of features that could be nice to control just by facing the phone.

But as a console controller, it is not a great idea. No better than wheels or dance pads or plastic instruments.

And I completely understand that. Microsoft needs to prove to gamers that Kinect is worth being in the box and that additional price point aside from a tech demo showcasing the speed of switching between television and a game, which is kind of cool if it actually works that seamlessly. Of course that doesn't dictate the additional price point but it's still a ways off from launch so let's see what happens.

But theoretically yes, the Xbox One could be relatively cheaper than it already is.

Does anyone really cares about TV stuff? TV viewership is shrinking year over year, most people are now subscribing to netflix or hulu or both, and gets whatever they cant get through those via iTunes or other means over the internet.

The best use for Kinect I have had, other than kinect sports, was using the voice commands in Mass Effect 3 to change ammo. For the powers I was popping them off to quickly for that to be much use, but at most twice per encounter I could say "cryo ammo" or "warp ammo" and have it switch without me having to bring up the radial menu.

It is a shame that the headset couldn't be used for that, but I can see they would then have difficulty when you're also chatting and confusing it.

I will be interested to see if/how they manage any sort of quick mute function for the kinect, because I sure as hell don't want everyone I'm playing to also be hearing my local conversations.

I'm sorry but no one can take you seriously when you use things like XBone, XBone-Eighty, X180, or any other extremely contrived pun that has been beat to death by the internet.

The problem is that Kinect is probably the favourite of some Microsoft top executive who doesnt want to make that concession even if it would mean being competitive with PS4 pre-order sales.

Kinect is Microsofts own Bluray at the moment for which they seem to be quite willing to lose their position as the leading platform saleswise in USA.

My previous consoles have been xboxes but this time around my first console purchase will be a PS4. Hopefully in time Microsoft will come to its senses and realize that selling a console in today´s economic climate for 499 dollar/euros is quite crazy. But I guess that Microsoft has to eat a bit of that humble pie first in order to see the light.

Honestly, I don't care for tv. I watch maybe two or three shows exclusively and even then, I don't watch that much tv anymore. A moderate plus I guess is having everything packed into the box, even if no one uses it, they covered those needless bases I guess.

The Kinect splits 3rd parties because there are developers and gamers who think it is bullshit.