Current Events > Why did the Kinect fail?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It was a new way of playing games, yet everyone hated it because they dismissed it as casual trash.

Because it was casual trash from the wii era
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No killer app that really justified it outside of Dance Central. You needed far too much space to make use of it which ruled it out of most Japanese households. Plus at the end of the day the controller just works and replacing it with a lower fidelity input method just didn't work for modern gaming.
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Xbox go home

Xbox GO HOME

X BOX... GO... HOME...

ok

Xbox GO TO NETFLIX

XBOX GO... TO... NET... FLIX

XBOX SELECT

XBOX SELECT PROFILE

XBOX SELECT ITEM 1

XBOX SE-LECT I-TEM-ONE

ugh it reset

XBOX SELECT

XBOX SELECT ITEM 1

piece of cake ;-)
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What were your favorite Kinect games TC?

I'm still buttmad about how motion controls killed the Sonic Riders series. It ended with a Kinect game. The developers knew full well motion controls don't fucking work and they made the tracks progressively more simple and wide with each release. Zero Gravity was okay since the controller tilt controls were not mandatory. Then Free Riders came with its mandatory motion controls and it had the most boring tracks possible. Since motion controls still don't fucking work they balanced it so you could just bump around randomly and come in first. Motion controls were such an awful fad.

TBH

I still think it was a good piece of tech. My daughter and I still play Sports 1&2, The Disneyland game, dance central, a couple of the fitness games and kinect adventures all the time. If you have a group of 3-4 people around it becomes a good party tool as well. Most of the games we purchased when they were $2-5 bucks as well so I think for the hours we've spent on it, it was worth it. Also, high level darts with 2 other people >>>
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Becasue it was inaccurate, required tons of space, and ruined franchises with previously good reputations.
The Kinect was doomed to fail right from the start.
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No games
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It was incredibly unresponsive to actions and voice commands.
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It almost certainly poisoned X1's marketshare, as well.

VGAddict90 posted...

yet everyone hated it because they dismissed it as casual trash.

Do you even remember the E3? Microsoft's big middle finger to the consumer?
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Because Nintendo struck a goldmine with initial interest in motion controls, and by the time Microsoft released it public interest had already been dropped and VR/AR was the new craze that people were looking forward to. So, it missed the target window, didn't really offer anything remotely interesting, and didn't have many games.

tl;dnr - too late, too meh, and too few games.
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It had no place in any game that used a 3D environment. Unless you really liked shouting voice commands at your kinect (that wouldn't work), or running on the spot like an idiot to move your character.

Also, using it as a mic for multiplayer games was fucking stupid. Good luck putting a device with a microphone on your tv and expecting it to pick up your voice over the game audio.
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Nobody played Xbox for waggle shit. That's what they played Wii for.
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If there's one thing I know about gamers, it's that they love physical activity.
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VGAddict90 posted...

It was a new way of playing games, yet everyone hated it because they dismissed it as casual trash.

Because it didn't fucking work. The consistency of success with controls was nil. A total crapshoot if anything you did worked or not.
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Xbox go home
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"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXN7vLPsDSM

AAA gaming hardware according to Microsoft.
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VGAddict90 posted...

It was a new way of playing games, yet everyone hated it because they dismissed it as casual trash.

Bruh, did you not watch the 2010 and 2011 microsoft E3 conferences? >_>
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TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

I think a decade was plenty enough time to give it a chance

It was incredibly successful and sold a lot
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I like it for screen/video capping and controlling my other devices (tv, receiver)
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TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

lol. "buy this broken thing because hey they might fix it later"
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MC_BatCommander posted...

TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

lol. "buy this broken thing because hey they might fix it later"

If people don't support the attempts, it'll never really happen. I doubt we'd have color TV if nobody wanted black and white ones and everyone decided to wait for those to be invented.

I wanted to upgrade and play 64-man Battlefield 4, but I didnt want to give Microsoft $100 for that PoS.

I hated that thing so much, I held off on upgrading, until they finally started selling Ones without it.
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xbox, play hobbit
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jhjmonnee posted...

I still think it was a good piece of tech.

It is. It was the goto device to use for cheapish robotics and computer vision research projects for a good bit of time
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I think it's a larger problem that arises with trying to slap on a new control mechanism to an existing piece of hardware then expecting game developers to develop their games for this peripheral.

The only time I ever feel like this worked was with the original DualShock. That came about midway through the PS1's lifespan and, thanks to the N64 popularizing the use of analog sticks, became mainstream enough for developers to confidently develop games like Ape Escape that would only recognize the peripheral.

Just about any other time this has been attempted (like the EyeToy, 3DS Circle Pad Pro, the Wii-mote Plus, etc.), they never go the adoption rate to justify making a big push to produce games exclusively using this hardware. Plus you have to think of the audience (can the demographic you've been attracting to this point pivot enough to include a different sector and is it worth the investment to reach them).

However, leaving that aside, I feel like it never worked that well anyway. The camera is low-res, the tracking is iffy, and the voice recognition was poor and laggy.
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MacadamianNut3 posted...

jhjmonnee posted...

I still think it was a good piece of tech.

It is. It was the goto device to use for cheapish robotics and computer vision research projects for a good bit of time

Didn't MS abandon that market recently?
It makes no sense to screw over the people who actually want your maligned product.

TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

they were shit out of the gate and shit for the 10 years after.

We're done.
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TheGrindery posted...

MC_BatCommander posted...

TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

lol. "buy this broken thing because hey they might fix it later"

If people don't support the attempts, it'll never really happen. I doubt we'd have color TV if nobody wanted black and white ones and everyone decided to wait for those to be invented.

Poor comparison tbh, the Kinect simply didn't work as advertised and thus deserved to fail.
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Questionmarktarius posted...

MacadamianNut3 posted...

jhjmonnee posted...

I still think it was a good piece of tech.

It is. It was the goto device to use for cheapish robotics and computer vision research projects for a good bit of time

Didn't MS abandon that market recently?
It makes no sense to screw over the people who actually want your maligned product.

there is a replacement better suited for those people. the kinect stuff was mostly driven by cheap hacks. those people are getting actual products and software with actual support that they need now.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

TheGrindery posted...

"I'm not supporting motion controls unless they're perfect right out of the gate."

they were shit out of the gate and shit for the 10 years after.

We're done.

VR is the true realization of motion controls. Shit actually works.
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ChromaticAngel posted...

Questionmarktarius posted...

MacadamianNut3 posted...

jhjmonnee posted...

I still think it was a good piece of tech.

It is. It was the goto device to use for cheapish robotics and computer vision research projects for a good bit of time

Didn't MS abandon that market recently?
It makes no sense to screw over the people who actually want your maligned product.

there is a replacement better suited for those people. the kinect stuff was mostly driven by cheap hacks. those people are getting actual products and software with actual support that they need now.

ooooooo!
More info, please.

Yeah pretty much that. I think my group uses Asus sensors now and ROS almost makes any RGBD camera plug and play so the Kinect isn't king anymore

Microsoft looked like they got the message from the people who reverse engineered the Kinect 1 when they announced an API and software suite for the Kinect 2...but then they made it so it worked only on Windows when most of the community that used the Kinect 1 for projects used Linux....

I used the Kinect 2 myself for my last project in grad school (because of its skeleton tracking and voice recognition API) and it was a pain in the ass to get a bridge to Linux set up because I am not one of those hacky types of people
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