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Xbox One Thread: Chug and charge the gamertag list in the OP!
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I think we'll see a lot of indie development by people who weren't around to get "burned" by MS once before. Or we'll see devs who say "fuck the past, I want to work with these tools" and look past the bullshit.
No, I saw it. But I've been around the block enough times to know that there's a wide difference between "potential" and "people actually developing for the thing."
I've been thinking long and hard on this, and really the only way to positively spin the fact that no one's showing anything for Kinect 2.0 at this point is that maybe Microsoft hasn't really done a good job of actually getting Kinect out there in developer hands. Which is possible, because third-parties were surprised by... well, other now-cancelled features of One that we shouldn't get into. Then again, that scenario also has worrying implications, since Nintendo did the same thing with the original Wiimote, and we know what happened after that.
No official release/drivers until 2014. I'm sure the community will hack something together, though.
Literally every PS3 controller has motion control, no one uses it
It doesn't, but like I said in my post earlier, not having it included all but guarantees they won't.
So it's giving it a chance vs all but guaranteeing it no chance.
You keep bringing up this Dance Central thing, but here's the issue: Kinect being great for Dance Central means absolutely nothing to the overwhelming majority of games. That point is only relevant when saying "the Kinect is great for making a dance game"; it's meaningless compared to effectively the entire game market, because good motion controls simply doesn't translate automatically to good/innovative gameplay. The Wii sold a bazillion consoles, and did the motion controls there really change the industry paradigm of gamepads? Not really.
The Kinect may be great for certain games, but it's not an earth-shaking revelation. Nobody is going to throw money at shoehorning in Kinect controls when the gamepad will do the exact same job for cheaper; the only games that will utilize the Kinect to any meaningful extent are those that would've been developed for it as a peripheral anyway, especially considering the way Microsoft is backpedaling. It was a poor, poor choice of pack-in hardware, a choice based on overreactions from an obsolete time in the market; now it's either dead weight that excessively elevates the cost of lower-grade hardware, or a stone around Microsoft's neck as they keep trying to support it and most people don't even glance at it.
I use dance central as a model because it really does take advantage of the tech well, and commercially did stellar. people like to hate on kinect because it got a lot of bad games, but games like child of eden, gunstringer, and fruit ninja prove fun gameplay is possible with kinect-style controls. i obviously think having either a move style controller, or maybe better peripherals like light guns and stuff to pair with the kinect, would bring some interesting games to the thing.
I don't think you guys are really the target market with the kinect stuff. I see more games like happy action theater and lococycle for kinect, smaller games with wackier premises that lend themselves well to motion control.
The oculus rift is the first really amazing really good virtual reality experience. It has a dynamite sales pitch, plenty of demonstrations of the power and potential of the hardware, and tons of interest.
The Kinect 2.0 is a reboot of a failed peripheral, using the same sales pitch as the first iteration with the addition of "no seriously guys we'll get it right this time you'll see"
Well, "failed" is hardly the word. As a peripheral, the Kinect saw a pretty fat wad of success. Then, as with happens with a peripheral like that, its popularity hit a peak and it faded away. At that point in time, Microsoft would've been smart to realize "hey, this was neat and made us money, but there's not a lot of development or interest in it any more to do this exact same thing again", rather than tripling-down and making a peripheral part of the mainline console. Now all that money they would've made, and more, is going to end up blown on another device that does the same stuff and will have the same interest in it in the long run: little.
The Kinect is an interesting way to interact with a system; I'm not arguing that at all. But the stuff you're pointing out is just more and more proof to me that the Kinect 2.0 is 100% a peripheral device and Microsoft doesn't have the sense to see it. Halo 4 plays on the standard 360 system, and it outsold Dance Central by well over a million units. Small off-kilter games can be interesting, sure, but no way are they a decent justification of forcing the console to also have the Kinect packed along. If nothing else, the money just won't be there, especially in competition with mobile devices competing in the same arena.
Regardless, there's no right play here. I think it's silly to suggest that everybody should be saddled with the Kinect hardware to make sure interest is artifically inflated enough for minor pieces of game diversion, but at the same time, just dropping the thing would have an immediate cost for Microsoft as well in more ways than one. But if the early Xbone sales are slow, I can pretty much guarantee that Microsoft will drop the mandatory Kinect support as well; no way are they going to willingly give up that sort of ground to Sony over the issue of a peripheral device.
People in this very thread who have access to a dev One have said that the new Kinect's voice recognition is almost flawless, even with accents, and is a neat way to make use of the console.
Just on that fact alone is should be kind of obvious that the kinect 2 isn't the same animal as the kinect 1.
Let's play Mario Kart or something...
If voice commands are what justify Kinect's inclusion, perhaps MS could have found a way to allow for that without the 3D camera that has put them in an untenable place with the XBO's price. Unless perhaps, Kinect 2.0 reads lips.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
There are lots of things the kinect 2 can do on paper... but the two biggest complaints I saw about the v1 kinect were that the voice recognition was spotty, and that it was almost unusable in rooms with more cramped conditions.
The v2 is supposed to have fixed all those + more. The anecdotal voice improvements from people with the dev unit simply illustrates that they have done more than slap a new sticker on the same device.
As for voice recognition being software? Sure, if talking about a computer. But the V1 had to do everything "in house" as they didn't want to tax the 360 to do the work. Assuming they follow the same model here, all/most of the grunt work is being done in the kinect v2 itself. It's likely just spitting output to the console, not the raw data. But for all I know it's using the "non console" part of the system for all of that... but no idea.
Does any of that justify the inclusion and the price disparity for it? Depends on who you ask. For me, I think it's a risky move, but it's not like they are under powering their console by a huge margin just to include it. So personally I have no qualms about buying the One + kinect 2. My only question is... especially now... what will they actually use it for? If they are going to cut it out at some point, and devs know this... then there is no reason for me to get it, because I know the likleyhood of it being used for anything I might care about is closing in on 0%.
Maybe. But I don't think we have the technology yet to miniaturize microphones that are small enough to be worn on the head. I'd give it a few years at least.
Please, please, please.
And massive online support for all kinds of interesting AI stuff on the azure servers.
I can think of absolutely no way that having a microphone placed in a room that is able to detect and understand voices clearly is in any way more helpful and less cumbersome than having to wear a microphone on my head to serve the same ends.
Recognizing multiple people at once, or even multiple people in succession (unless you like swapping the headset around).
Of course those are only applicable in a few situations, but they qualify as less cumbersome than the microphone on your head.
Just to anticipate the responses, apparently the Kinect uses a super advanced microphone and specialized voice recognition software to do what it does.
Now, for all the dashboard shit, searching and playing apps and all that? Sure, maybe that level of sophistication is needed.
For almost everything that games have used? No fucking way. You do not need the mighty power of the Kinect to say "Reload" or "Scan" in Halo. That's just stupid.
Okay, so, now that it's better you can have it doing more advanced things than just detecting one person saying "reload" and "scan". And yes, for all that dashboard stuff it's very useful.
I, personally, am very much looking forward to seeing the improvements. I already took November 22nd and 25th off from work, stating "personal nerd day" as the reason.
If the Kinect 2 can differentiate better, though, you could set games to only respond to your voice. Alternatively, have versus modes where the person with the clearest voice wins - like a rap battle or soliloquy-off.
Party games with a quiz element where you just yell out the answer could be fun.
But then again I don't know what the API looks like for their Kinect. It might just be able to interpret everything and then output whatever was said to text and the game can use that.
As I'm typing this I am reminded at how much I miss 1 vs 100 on the 360. I had way, WAY too much fun with that on Fridays.
There's words it'll detect on the dashboard and in apps that I'd have to say I'm entirely positive haven't been programmed into it. Browsing Lovefilm, you've got films with words that I'd consider highly unlikely to have been input in any time-consuming way, like Technovore, Ferngully, Aileen Wuornoss, Devdas, Grouchland etc. (I could do this all day). The point is, at no point in the process of Lovefilm putting the film up in their library and the app displaying the information on the Xbox, do I believe somebody has gone through each name to check it's a word in the Kinect's library, and added it if not. There's got to be something in there that's learning and doing that automatically.
Though I don't know for sure, I would be extremely surprised if individual developers had to worry about interpreting the players voice commands/etc other than some sort of transcription on the Xbox's side.
And yeah I would have absolutely PAID to play 1 vs 100 with everyone again. That was way too much fun.
Oh hey that's another thing - there's like at most five feet between my TV and my couch
No problems at all with it determining that I'm trying to do stuff when I'm sitting on the couch (it's actually triggered accidentally a couple of times when I have my head propped up on my arm while staring in disbelief at a football game)
I haven't tried to do anything with it standing up so no idea how well it fares there
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
Didn't they change that to include controller support? Or does it still require Kinect for some functions?
Also, Titanfall going to Japan.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
The other hand is Forza 5, and the next Halo title, both of which I'll need pretty desperately. I'm still surprised that exclusivity for either platform is this much of a presence (I didn't think it would be three, four years ago).
Really need look more into Dead Rising 3. I never really 'got' the series, despite multiple efforts, but everyone loves it, and I don't think the masses are wrong.
The PS4 has party chat.
As far as my Xbox One launch buys, I'm also looking into Forza 5 and Dead Rising 3. It's a simple thing, but I really want to feel those impulse triggers in Forza. I hope more games use that feature. I'm not sure if any other game has announced support for it yet.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
They're bringing party groups in? That's excellent news, hopefully they'll actually enforce the standard across games, unlike PSN in this generation.
Still think it was one of a few really bad judgement calls not to implement it earlier. There were architecture reasons, I'm sure, but really disappointing.
I'd actually say it was a 'small' version of an open world game with some third-person action elements thrown into it. Unfortunately, I never felt it did any of them well--so while I always understood the attraction of figuring out your own way to stomp on some zombies, and tearing through a crowd of them in an SUV, I barely managed to complete the game once before I wanted to really stop playing.
I believe Sony's explanation for why the PS3 didn't have it was because of memory limitations. The Xbox 360's allocation of memory may have allowed it do a little more with its operating system compared to the PS3. That's no longer an issue, of course, with these new systems.