Just passionate about Education, Gaming, and Family
A Better Way to Kinect
So I am truly impressed with the Kinect. However I do see it going the way of the Wii../ in other words no good games I want to play. How do you fix this? How can Microsoft make sure that fun games are made instead of recreating all of the Wii hits? Easy turn it over to the people who know how to innovate… the Indies! I am not knocking the guys at Microsoft or any big game studio. But I am looking at the track record. The first few games to come out for the Kinect were Just Dance, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Sports. (Hint: Click the links to see the Kinect Equivalant)
If you want something new and not pressured by big money (publishers) to just recreate something else that was popular, the indie is the person that can help you out. Microsoft should continue to show support for the indie teams out there and make this available quickly further drawing on the power that they have over Sony and the Wii. Which is a strong indie market. I would love to know your thoughts on this. How do you think Kinect can be made greater than the Wii? Also I will give away a Battlefield Play4Free Beta key randomly to one of the readers who respond with comments! The key will be handed out next Tuesday.
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@Orb
Yeah the PC guys are really showing the power of the Kinect I saw one hack that had the system doing finger recognition which it can’t do now due to data compression issues.@Mr. Banton
Yeah there are some issues when it comes to using the Kinect as a way to browse my media on the Xbox and my network. Its more intergrated with the Zune section of media but not Netflix or computers on my network. Those require a controller. -
I agree it’s unfortunate that Kinect does not yet have XBLA or XBLIG support. (Disc only)
Also unfortunate for MS that they lost some of their bigger indie supporters – see http://www.spryfox.com
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One problem could be Microsoft’s infamous lack of durability. Let’s hope it won’t take them another 36 months to realize the potential of having independent game developers come up fun and new ideas for the Kinect.
However, even if they will open towards Indies quickly, one thing that will cause a problem is their bureaucracy – Kinect or not.
After a recent change, App Hub membership registration is now only available to a select 30 countries – not even all countries where their XBOX Live service is available.
Unconfirmed, but rumors say that this is because of having to work taxing issues out with every single country. This will slow down their expansion enough on their new Windows Phone platform to have a very very hard time catching up to the iPhone.
I don’t necessarily mean the global market. Letting Apple secure its supremacy over many of the smaller local markets is a luxury one doesn’t really have when starting several years after the competition has obtained a firm grip on its customers. There would be several reasons to open towards Indies, and open globally, as soon as possible.
In my point of view, the question is less about whether Indies are called in – they have been in the XBOX game for a while, fortunately, and I think it is inevitable that eventually they will also be able to get an API for the Kinect. But a more important question is when. MS is painfully slow with stuff like this and it could as well be too late if a competitor came out with a better solution and a full API.
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Very good points Konrad they tend to move at a snails pace. And with the indie system already in place and supporting so many groups I don’t understand how it could take so long to add the API for the Kinect. I am sure it will add to MS overhead but not that much that it should take months to release.
As for the App Hub Registration issue that just seems ridiculous. I would have to doubt that tax is the issues since they are already taking money from those regions through Xbox live. I am not going to say I have extensive knowledge on global markets but I would assume MS would know how to get this done… again bureaucracy is always an issue…
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I think the most important thing to make the experience more fun is to remove as much of the lag as possible. Currently, you can’t make extremely fast-paced games because of this. If the experience can be made FAST, it opens up many doors.
But the other thing that would add to the fun factor: games that work with Kinect *and* controller. As it stands, FPS could only really be on rails, due to both lag and lack of a decent control scheme. I’m sure it’s possible to make a good ‘Kinect Only’ one, but adding in a controller might very well make it a GREAT ‘combo’ one.
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The Kinect is great! Our family loves the Kinect Sports Seasons 1 & 2…they provide great exercise and family togetherness! I would think that the Wii versions would be just as fun, but do agree that there has to be some level of separation between the two consoles and their games. Visit http://www.gottagetthis.com today and choose yours.
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MS aren’t known for innovation – only for abusing the word. And abusing Word users
The most interesting uses I’ve seen for Kinect so far have all been hacks on a PC, not an Xbox. Hopefully they will give indie game developers some ideas, though. Also, please make more games where emulating Ballmer isn’t necessary. I have limited space!