(maybe stupid) question:
If Oculus Rift comes to consoles, how would it be integrated with Kinect?
The reason I am asking is because right now I play may games through Sony's HTZ-T2 and for me ad least Kinect seems to have no use whatsoever.
Simple, Occulus Rift can track your head movements. Kinect can track your entire body movements. Both have applications within the gamespace. Since both can track your head movements, then optimally you would use that to synchronize Occulus Rift head tracking with Kinect body tracking.
Now instead of canned animations to interact with objects, you can interact with them directly. Want to punch a punk in the face? Punch him. Want to instead push his shoulder? Push it. Want to instead kick him in the stomach? Kick him. Just try not to lose your balance when you do it though.
With a controller I'd assume you'd either have to look (center your vision) on what you want to interact with, or use a controller to move around a virtual cursor (hands perhaps). Much more clunky as opposed to just reaching out to it with your hands like you would normally do in the real world. For example, when I pick up a cup to drink from it I rarely ever look directly at it. I just reach ot the side and pick it up. Without Kinect, you have to either center your vision or navigate (in 3 dimensions) with a controller, very very awkward. You'd basically need 2 thumbsticks or a thumbstick and D-pad to manage it. Where with Kinect, you just reach out with your hand.
Movement is obviously an issue and there it's likely best to hold your controller in one hand or perhaps have a device specifically for walking. You only need forwards and backwards for that. As rotation can be handled entirely by Kinect (no need to look at the TV screen which is the limitation with rotation for Kinect + TV).
The obvious problem that comes in and has existed with all VR headset devices is that if the headset totally occludes the outside world, you'll have to have a specially designed space to use it. For VR headsets that combined full body tracking, that often required being in a specially designed space with a circular wall around the person to prevent them from wandering into something potentially hazardous.
Hence, you'd either need Kinect to track your room and put down a highlighted area on the ground in game that denotes where you have to stay in, or a headset that doesn't fully occlude the outside world. Having Kinect just put in a highlighted virtual boundary on the ground in game (and perhaps in the air as well if you approach the boundary too closely) to match your living room space that it can track would likely be the ideal solution.
Regards,
SB