Post by gmandam on Aug 22, 2014 4:36:37 GMT -5
Wave goodbye to motion controls.
Microsoft’s motion-tracking Kinect 2.0 sensor was supposed to be what differentiated the Xbox One from the competition. It was more than just a way to talk directly to your console: It was a tool designed to transform the game machine into a social and media hub, the tip of the spear in Microsoft’s fight to take over your living room. More than anything, it was supposed to be way, way better than the first Kinect.
Today, though, it seems little more than an afterthought.
That's conventional wisdom anyway. And to some degree I even agree with it.
But it was inevitable that Kinect was going to be dead, putting aside the panic regarding the NSA scandal and them spying on you doing some solo-campaigning. There was a real fear that people would have their biometrics used in advertising and so on and so forth, which is often worth insane amounts of money (Big Data exists for a reason). But when Sony priced their console at around 100 dollars cheaper (slightly less cheaper, but still fairly cheaper in europe as well, by around 70-80 quid).
Well, Microsoft was always going to have jettison something, just like the PS3 did for PS2 and PS1 backwards compatibility.
If I was Microsoft and wanted people to care about Kinect again, and I presume they were upselling the Kinect by a not unconsiderable margin, then I would get some actual first party developers making meaningful Kinect games. Doesn't matter the genre or focus, just so long as the Kinect is a integral part and the games are actually popular. And actual popular, not the fake kind of popular.