Microsoft waves arms, signals 2.5m Kinect sales Microsoft has claimed to have sold more than 2.5m Kinect Xbox add-ons since the gadget went on sale earlier this month. It reckons it'll sell the same volume again before the year is out, most of them in the next 25 days or so, we'd say. Sony's alternative offering, Move, which requires the player wave a rather phallic …
Sony was claiming 1.5 million sales in Europe for the first month, and 1 million *shipped* in the US. M$ confirmed it's figures were sold to consumers, not shipped.
So I'd guess slightly lower numbers for move in the 1st month comparisons (especially since M$ is doing a 25 day report, the first month could be anything upto 400-500k more).
Would be nice if Sony gave us some straight out sales figures.
They looked at this tech in 2002, 3 years before current gen systems, and found it had too many issues then.
The guy clearly doesn't understand gaming. He understands teenagers in bedrooms playing FPS's. Gaming is meant to be fun. And kinect sure as hell looks like fun. Accuracy and lag are software, not hardware issues. And the sheer enormity of possibilities with it are enticing, it's just down to developers to use it well.
He also doesn't seem to understand what the market wants at large. But then the playstation 3 has never been aimed at mass market, so there's no reason to try and aim the move that way, the ps3 is just too expensive to get into that niche.
Kinect has marketed itself perfectly. It's obviously fantastic for families, wives, etc etc, fitness and dancing games with great accuracy and feedback. And at the end of the day, you still have a HD console with a glut of "hardcore" (ridiculous phrase) games.
Simple line of childrens toys (plastic swords etc, light gun) opens up all sorts of rpg/action/adventure games.
Simply check out what the hacks are coming out with, after less than a month. The super mario one looks like a lot of fun, and with a dedicated game, could leads to something hilarious (mario 3d would be equally doable).
Certainly there are some games that would struggle to be amazing with this interface, but a Black and White game could truly be fantastic.
Care to point out your typical Xbox gamer? Since i'm pretty sure the average game is late 20s to mid 30s these days, so likely to have at least a girlfriend, and quite possibly children. And now with an interface to really enjoy games with them. And I'm sure that even typical xbox gamers (sounds almost as bad as "hardcore"), occasionally play sillier games for fun. Even if not, Kinect is creating a bridge between truly casual play and more "typical". Obviously it's going to take a while for those core games to come about combining the two, but there coming.
There's also the future view here. Next generation is definitely going to include this sort of technology in one form or another, and microsoft & co. will have already developed a solid framework of software to take advantage of this, along with solidifying which techniques work, and which don't. The next few steps take us into headsets and virtual reality, whilst running around in a giant hamster ball.
If you cannot see the possibilities that's fine. But that doesn't mean there aren't any, a lot of game developers seem to be jumping on the wagon (and these big sales numbers are certainly going to help keep that trend going).
I understand everything you say and would agree completely but for one thing. Kinect just isn't good enough to do half the things everyone thinks it can, and the reason for this is it lacks the resolution to do hand and finger orientation, it might sound like a small matter but with no buttons, hand and finger movements become pretty vital when interacting with a virtual enviroment.
A lot of Kinect's promotional material talked about games having no learning curve & making games more accessible, to me this means dumbed down, basic gameplay. Have you seen the video of the guy playing JoyRide? He just sits there with his hands in from of him not moving and the game plays itself, from a gamers perspective, it's hilarious.
Here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo
Anyone can have big visions of the future, but I'm talking about Kinect now. Not what Microsoft might be doing 10 years down the line.
I'm very interested to see what the developers will do with Kinect but I can't help but think in about 6 months time everyone will be scratching their heads wondering where the cool kinect games are at because I honestly don't think they will materialise, we will see what they do.
I suppose you have a point about the changes in the gaming market although I would put the typical xbox gamer as 13 to 30s myself, not starting at late 20s.
TBH I will support whatever format I think is best, I always have. It does come across as fanboyism but it's not. I don't give a hoot about Sony, if i thought Kinect was better, I'd buy a 360 and kinect at the drop of a hat, but it's not.
Also, I've seen some hacks. Nothing that impressed If there's other video out there, I'll root it out.
Yeah I know about that video, and as Microsoft said, that's pretty damn accessible to anyone :D.
However, that's microsofts first load of software, it's going to be deliberately dumbed down and light hearted. It's a software issue, not a hardware one.
Onto hand/fingers, I have to agree, to have this degree of accuracy would have been wonderful, but I could also see it causing a lot of issues (when jumping around do you know if you are making a fist or not? How exactly your fingers are moving?), but still, you're correct. I do wonder if it is capable of detecting a fist from open palm though, I would guess (from the night vision vid) it probably should be able to, maybe not so easily for small children, but certainly for adults.
But then, what exactly do you need fingers and precise hand movements for? Interacting with objects is often done with a single button now, so that's easily enough replicated by placing your hand over the object and pushing/pressing forward. Any shooting could easily be done with a light gun (I really really really hope they do this). Movement has a number of possible methods, as to which will end up being used will probably depend on reviews and comments as developers try them out, anything from one hand being a joystick, to the movement method used in the super mario hack.
Racing games in general are perhaps not going to be the best genre, and it may, or may not work well with RTS's it depends on how accurate the positioning can be (though voice commands could easily be used to select units, and give orders, though directions would be better with a more direct interface). Basically using voice to replace the key holds to tell the unit to patrol/guard/hide etc.
Obviously it depends on developers, but I would hope with this big user base, developers will go for some more mainstream games for your typical gamer.
>Onto hand/fingers, I have to agree, to have this degree of accuracy would have been wonderful
Question of scale/distance - UX/IX folk working on close up applications with the Kinect attached to a desktop PC a la Web Cam are having no problem with finger tracking, handshapes, orientation etc applications......
MS have given tacit approval to hacking with Kinect, and the stuff emerging after just a few weeks will probably surprise techincal skeptics and those uninterested in gaming....better showcase than some of the release titles, though Dance Central is pretty impressive and Adventures/JoyRide a big hit with my previously Wii fanatic kids...
Google for DepthJS, Oliver Kreylos [the dual kinect applications are awesome] or Evoluce to name just a few interesting hacks away from the Xbox.....
hands fingers.... I've taken a good look at this and a lot of the hacks are just doing background subtraction and then doing an image match on the restultant 2D silohuette i.e. does that look more like an open hand or a closed one?
Sony apparently did a lot of work developing background subtraction on the EyeToy for the PS2 and found out, in reality, it wasn't much use and didn't really offer any benefits.
What I want to see is.....
a person rendered in 3D space manipulating a virtual 3D object with their hands, then I'll be impressed. Becuase that's what everyone wants it to do.
http://www.kinecthacks.net/
All this webcam game crap is to be frank, un-impressive.
This is just like the Wii all over again. From a technical point Kinect is impressive but the Move is far more accurate and better for a wider range of games. In the short-term though Kinect will appeal to families and people who have friends come around a lot for a drunken time jumping around in front of the TV.
Ignoring the XBox and PS3 for a moment the Kinect has wider appeal than just to console gamers because of the technology it uses as shown by the open source created projects and implementations appearing all over the place. I imagine quite a few sales have gone to people who intend to do that too, I've considered buying one myself for it but the price is too high currently.
I wasn't comparing the XBox to the PS3, I was basing what I said purely on the Kinect vs Move debate, which is what the article was talking about. PS3 may not have as wide an appeal but since I was commenting on the wider use of Kinect, such as with PCs now, as increasing the sales beyond just the console gamers.
. . . worldwide sales of both consoles are close enough that it doesn't matter anymore (both beyond 30 million, with a ~10% difference in total).
And if this is to drive console sales, remember that a 360 + Kinect is about the same price as a PS3 + Move or in both cases double the price of a Wii.
I've played with Kinect, Move and several Wii's and beyond the "wasn't it funny how much of a tit you looked", it just didn't inspire me in any way to want any of this tech anywhere near me.
As for how it'll get used, we can fully expect even more dumbed down FPS games to go along with it, to cover for the fact that it's just not as versatile as a controller. For example, you need to be able to move about freely or it's just on rails; you need to be able to talk to your team mates or it's just a death-match; you need to be able to choose when to reload or it'll happen when you precisely don't want it to; you need to be able to switch weapons quickly and when you need to or you can only do what the game says is right at that point - I could easily go on and most FPS gamers will happily tell you many, many more reasons or problems that they need to find a cumbersome way to overcome.
Is that why Xbox had a 18month headstart in which is amassed 9m console sales with nobody else competing, and the game between PS3 and Xbox is now only 400,000 units.
PS3 has clearly been outselling the Xbox by 3m or so units every year since launch. However looking at Microsofts weekly "tell you when it is, keep quiet when it isn't" spin would give a very different picture.
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