The hardware in Kinect 2.0 looks to be amazing where is the software to show it off?

[zed]

Keep making those marble rolling games, zed. iOS domination is just around the corner.

At least Im making (& completing) something function, how are you doing
I admit The difficulty in that game, like most of my games is prolly too much for most ppl to enjoy.

Then again it does show I know a bit about designing for a nonstandard interface, That marble game is perfectly designed for a phone, it requires no touching of the screen at all to play, i.e. I designed within the 'merits?' of the device, i.e. I realized its limitations & designed a game accordingly.

You would be limited with it for sure, but not all of us would be.

What game would you come up for with kinect2? Comeon hit us with these brilliant game ideas

Best game on the original Kinect was Kinect Adventures

Genre(s) Adventure / Sports game GameRankings 65.39%

65% is less than average, so if thats the best of the lot then the pickings must of been dire

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Man, theres still ppl that don't understand this [shock]
You would think with even MS practically giving up on kinect it would dawn on these ppl

That's untrue. Many peripherals and devices (sixaxis move, PSEye, Kinect, Move) had obviously way more potential than was ever realised. The inability of devs, driven by conservative business, to explore and create new experiences doesn't prove the inability of the hardware to provide new and valuable experiences. I expect the majority of devs approached the problem with the same mindset as yourself, decided Kinect (and others) were fairly useless for their game and abandoned it without even giving it a fair chance.

 

[AzBat]

65% is less than average, so if thats the best of the lot then the pickings must of been dire

Review scores aren't everything. Maybe all us large folks(260lbs here) just don't like games that make us get off the couch?

BTW, there are lot of Kinect-only games that got better Metacritic scores. If that's what you use to grade a game's success...

Dance Central 1,2 & 3 (82,86 & 86 respectively)
Sesame Street: Once Upon a Time (79)
Kinect National Geographic TV (78)
Kinectimals 1 & Now with Bears (74 & 78 respectively)
Gunstringer (77)
Just Dance 3, 4 & 2014 (70, 77 & 79 respectively)
You Shape Fitness Evolved 1 & 2012 (73 & 77 respectively)
Kinect Sesame Street TV (76)
Kinect Disneyland Adventures (73)
Kinect Sports (73)
NBA Baller Beats (73)
Hip Hop Dance Experience (72)
Zumba Fitness Core, Rush & World Party (77, 73 & 73 respectively)
Nike+ Kinect Training (71)

That's untrue. Many peripherals and devices (sixaxis move, PSEye, Kinect, Move) had obviously way more potential than was ever realised. The inability of devs, driven by conservative business, to explore and create new experiences doesn't prove the inability of the hardware to provide new and valuable experiences. I expect the majority of devs approached the problem with the same mindset as yourself, decided Kinect (and others) were fairly useless for their game and abandoned it without even giving it a fair chance.

This.

Tommy McClain

 

[dobwal]

It failed primary for the reasons I said on these forums back in 2010

1. Too much lag (most important thing)
2. Not nearly 100% accurate

Kinect2 may of improved those slightly but didnt fix them, for the vast majority of games these 2 things are vital
Also with the kinect2
3. No software at launch shows you MS had no idea how to work around 1&2

I think what happened is back in 2011/12 when they were designing xbone/kinect2, the bigwigs came in (ballmer etc) had a play with kinect2 for half an hour had some laughs and said, hell I havent had this much fun on a console for years, this is gonna be huge. Go with it.

It could have no lag and be 100% accurate and it would still be in the position it is today.

The problem with Kinect is that its limited to one ecosystem and is not applicable to the market as a whole.

Its not like there were technical reasons why Blackberries/Winmo phones of old couldn't support 99c apps that offered a plethora of functionality. The limited market meant limited appeal to most developers.

The same goes for Kinect as developers and publishers are businesses and appealing to a niche functionality that limits adoption across different platforms isn't attractive. Especially when there is no evidence that shows you can make a killing by catering to the that market.

If MS wanted to make Kinect relevant as a game device it should have devoted a ton resources to produce a ton first party Kinect titles. However, it would still need a few runaway hits to spark strong motivation amongst third parties to develop for the device.

If MS had some Kinect software that sold like COD:MW on the 360, believe more than just a few devs would have come running. Laggy inaccuracy and all.

 

[Cyan]

Now that function and zed are talking of iOS, I think the only way for the Kinect to be successful would happen if the Xbox One had access to a huge store with thousands of apps like iOS.

That's untrue. Many peripherals and devices (sixaxis move, PSEye, Kinect, Move) had obviously way more potential than was ever realised. The inability of devs, driven by conservative business, to explore and create new experiences doesn't prove the inability of the hardware to provide new and valuable experiences. I expect the majority of devs approached the problem with the same mindset as yourself, decided Kinect (and others) were fairly useless for their game and abandoned it without even giving it a fair chance.

Agreed.

Problem is that Xbox One needed to focus on the classic experiences that always work, and Kinect, two different gaming experiences in a console. Maybe they were biting off more than they can chew.

I heard that Microsoft will announce natural conversation with AIs in games in the E3 this year.

But this was also coming 3 years ago, for the Kinect X360.

http://www.lazygamer.net/xbox-360/natural-conversation-coming-to-kinect/

Plus Microsoft said time ago that you would be able to talk to an AI with Kinect.

http://www.lazygamer.net/xbox-360/microsoft-says-youll-be-able-to-talk-to-ai-with-kinect/

"You’ll literally say something like, ‘you know caddie, I think I need something that helps me with the wind conditions,’" he said to Eurogamer. "Then the caddie will respond with, ‘well, it could be either a six iron or a seven iron.’ And you say, ‘oh, I’d like the seven iron.’ It’ll be that natural of a conversation"

.

That's what I thought to, when I created a thread about an AI called Boxy and stuff. Never realised, as you say.

 

[zed]

That's untrue. Many peripherals and devices (sixaxis move, PSEye, Kinect, Move) had obviously way more potential than was ever realised. The inability of devs, driven by conservative business, to explore and create new experiences

Those lazy devs j/k yes business is conservative, but you dont think all these companies have tried to do experimenting with kinect and all they came up with are the stuff listed by AzBat, basically fitness/party/dancing stuff, exactly the stuff I forecast here years ago on these forums, theres a lot of smart ppl at these companies why cant they come up with these brilliant new ideas?. Why did Crytek drop kinect from ryse?

My question to function (and to anyone else) still remains, what game would you see developed for kinect? (*) Its gotta be using the motionreading part of kinect as the prime input device i.e. not control the person with controller and then say wave your hand to summon a medic.

It could have no lag and be 100% accurate and it would still be in the position it is today.

No it wont mate, if it was as accurate and responsive as a controller that opens up far more possibilities, MS have devoted 100s of millions to kinect, its not like they havent tried

(*) If its good enuf, you could be the person who saves the device

 

[MrFox]

I don't think business is conservative. Business is reasonable.

The risk must match the potential gain, and high-profile motion gaming is a really weird business proposition.

Someone taking unreasonable risks can get lucky, but will lose the game in the long run. Nintendo was lucky last gen. They tried again the same high risk and failed. Microsoft took an unreasonable risk with the bundling of Kinect-2 and TV, and it didn't work. The risk was high, the potential gain was small.

But there IS a place for high risks, it's in the small indies! They can try a huge number of weird control scheme and it doesn't cost a lot of backing from the console makers... if one of those end up being a big phenomenon, then they can make a AAA game based of that experimentation. MS should have paid a lot of small indies to experiment and have fun with Kinect-2. I have no idea why this didn't happen.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Those lazy devs j/k yes business is conservative, but you dont think all these companies have tried to do experimenting with kinect and all they came up with...

Experiments would have been run on a budget and capped to something that they can turn into a business. So in most cases, they would have 'dabbled', plus they'd have dabbled with the mindset of conventional gamers with decades of creation controller based mainstream games. Look at the poopy implementations on sixaxis for example. Uncharted shoehorned a few random elements just for the sake of it. The only truly naturally implementation IMO was Warhawk where the flying was very natural, although it appears most gamers preferred the standard controller methods.

Now compare the poopy implementations the devs realised against the ideas tooted by discussion on this board before PS3's release. There are some really frickin' obvious implementations, some stemming from Sony's own research. Sony found people don't tend to sit the controller still, especially not the younger/less core gamer. The arms autonomically jump about in response to the intentions of the gamer for their in-game avatar. Yet no games harnessed this. Not one game used input from the controller as 'I really want to make that jump' to adjust the jumping. Similarly, FIFA is an easy application of motion to add natural shifts/dodges, but EA stuck to complex dual-stick trickery, perhaps because motion controls were only on one platform.

Look even at Move. The early demos showed a classy shooting-skeletons RPG archery demo, and gamers were fairly excited. They then sat on their asses until they showed Sorcery, which had some potential. They then took an age to dumb that down into the final kiddy game where Move was just gimmicky. What happened to the good ideas that were proven to work? Devs did squat with them.

There are certainly some accuracy and latency issues with Kinect, but good design works around them. A few limitations don't render the IO system completely useless. The reason devs didn't conceive alternative solutions are basically because they're entrenched (for mindset and business reasons). There are a loads of mobile games that show how indies explore inputs, while the mainstream devs tend to support conventional games on mobile. For me it's very obvious that the console development community is too conservative. That's understandable, if disappointing, given they are in a business, but the console companies themselves have never backed their fringe ideas properly. EyeToy is the best example. It was a proven success in Europe, yet still SCEA were reluctant to release it, and then did a half-hearted effort, before Sony ditched it. The only people who did it properly was Nintendo with Wii, and look what a success that turned out to be! If Sony had PSEye in PS3 as standard, the virtual-makeover app as demoed by Toshiba, head tracking GT for everyone who's head moves around while racing, and then released Move in a big way ASAP, they'd have had an HD Wii. They didn't execute. Neither did MS on Kinect beyond the initial interest.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

But there IS a place for high risks, it's in the small indies! They can try a huge number of weird control scheme and it doesn't cost a lot of backing from the console makers...

I disagree. Firstly, devs get to use their control schemes themselves. They aren't a completely different breed of human. If it's fun for them, chances are it'll be fun for ordinary folk. Secondly, you test. Problem is, that requires conviction and a sense of courage versus doing the same-old-same-old that you've proven can make a living (see Team 17 releasing yet another version of Worms!). As a dev facing a new project, the risk of a motion (enhanced) game is far greater than a conventional game, even if the risks needn't be high as long they're smart about it. A few months prototyping a new input method is a few months not working on the next bread-winner. So they all waited for someone else to test the waters, which no-one did courageously.

We has some hope in Indies exploring the tech, but they too would likely be conservative, plus Kinect may now be all but dead without it being standard.

 

[mosen]

Those lazy devs j/k yes business is conservative, but you dont think all these companies have tried to do experimenting with kinect and all they came up with are the stuff listed by AzBat, basically fitness/party/dancing stuff, exactly the stuff I forecast here years ago on these forums, theres a lot of smart ppl at these companies why cant they come up with these brilliant new ideas?. Why did Crytek drop kinect from ryse?

My question to function (and to anyone else) still remains, what game would you see developed for kinect? (*) Its gotta be using the motionreading part of kinect as the prime input device i.e. not control the person with controller and then say wave your hand to summon a medic.


No it wont mate, if it was as accurate and responsive as a controller that opens up far more possibilities, MS have devoted 100s of millions to kinect, its not like they havent tried

(*) If its good enuf, you could be the person who saves the device

Developers are the problem. When you teach someone to use both analog sticks or button layout for a specific game, they know what they are doing and what they are going to do. Kinect is more complicated because developers trying to show people how to move their body on 3D space with 2D pics. Many people don't know to how treat with Kinect and this is the main problem for many players, they don't know how to play and many of bad reviews are a side effect of this problem. Some people saying that Kinect track their movement correctly and others saying that it's unpredictable or inaccurate.

The other problem is that most Kinect games are actually a package of mini games that are going to be repetitive in a short period of time.

Dance Central or must of other games that you mentioned as fitness/party/dancing games are of those kind of games that players/developers were trying to learn/explain properly. Fable: The Journey is one of Kinect games with good graphics, story, characters, dialogues and gameplay but many people have problem with aiming system on the game and some reviewers gave it bad scores by comparing it with previous games on the series which were totally different from F:TJ.

Kinect accuracy isn't the only or biggest problem.

 

[Billy Idol]

Ok, but than we can sum the discussion (Shifty and Co) up like this: given reasonable time and money, it is obviously not possible up to now to make a special novel kinect controlled game that works and makes fun, i.e. a kinect killer app.

Who's fault is it?! Cell, the lazy devs, or Sony? Oh, sorry...this was another discussion some time ago...

 

[dobwal]

No it wont mate, if it was as accurate and responsive as a controller that opens up far more possibilities, MS have devoted 100s of millions to kinect, its not like they havent tried

(*) If its good enuf, you could be the person who saves the device

Publishers could care less about far more possibilities in terms of technical capabilities. These are the same pubs that mostly sat on the sideline when android and iOS first came along until relatively unknown devs start generating millions in app revenue.

And most of their early offerings were mostly just porting over physical console controllers schemes which made for crappy controls. Hardly anything novel or different that made good use of touch screens.

The fact that most of these pubs can't make Kinect work well isn't surprising. I doubt very seriously that many pubs are giving any of their devs some XB1 devs units with Kinects and telling them to have at it.

I held out hope for Kinect as a standard because I felt given enough incentive (100% of XB1 userbase) to develop for Kinect, its was the indies not pub backed devs that had the ability to make Kinect shine. Focusing on what Kinect does well and then using their imagination and creativity to produce titles that don't look like your everyday console title.

If MS had poured millions into driving indies to dev on Kinect v.1, we probably would have far more cases of "good" Kinect games.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Ok, but than we can sum the discussion (Shifty and Co) up like this: given reasonable time and money, it is obviously not possible up to now to make a special novel kinect controlled game that works and makes fun, i.e. a kinect killer app.

Who's fault is it?! Cell, the lazy devs, or Sony? Oh, sorry...this was another discussion some time ago...

You're mistaking inability to try with inability to succeed. I never called the devs lazy - only conservative and lacking courage/conviction in the new IO methods, and that's true of all people who by nature have trouble adopting new ideas and new ways of thinking. It's that barrier, the barrier of embracing and exploring new ideas, that has prevented Kinect getting anywhere. It's not a hardware fault. It's not a time and cost fault, because you don't need to sink millions in RnD. It's not an unrealistic requirement for time and money - EA or Ubisoft could have set up a 2/3 person team experimenting. It's just the belief in the product and willingness to explore it properly. The developers saw no need to change what they were doing because what they were doing was making them a living, and without a 'we have to do this' impetus, nor a 'we want to do this' impetus, the products were never explored.

 

[Billy Idol]

You're mistaking inability to try with inability to succeed. I never called the devs lazy - only conservative and lacking courage/conviction in the new IO methods, and that's true of all people who by nature have trouble adopting new ideas and new ways of thinking. It's that barrier, the barrier of embracing and exploring new ideas, that has prevented Kinect getting anywhere. It's not a hardware fault. It's not a time and cost fault, because you don't need to sink millions in RnD. It's not an unrealistic requirement for time and money - EA or Ubisoft could have set up a 2/3 person team experimenting. It's just the belief in the product and willingness to explore it properly. The developers saw no need to change what they were doing because what they were doing was making them a living, and without a 'we have to do this' impetus, nor a 'we want to do this' impetus, the products were never explored.

But what about Rare? What about Crytek? Whole teams did work on kinect games. You make it sound so easy...but the best devs in the world didn't manage it.

I don't know...I still hope that a (indie) dev puts out a great kinect game.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Rare were clearly charged with making sports/wiggle games, which they did and made fairly good on those. Crytek aren't one of the best devs in the world when it comes to original interfaces. They've very little experience. Chances are their attempts to create a Kinect game were heavily affected by preconceptions of how games should feel.

I point to discussions on this board of ideas for how all the motion interfaces could be used. There were lots of ideas, some more plausible than others. It just needs an open mind and commitment. And even if I do underestimate the difficulty in creating an effective Kinect (enhanced) experience, it still ridiculously short sighted to fob off the entire tech based on a lack of good titles when there are clearly multiple factors affecting the games produced extending well beyond the mere technicalities of the hardware.

 

[zed]

The notion that ppl are entrenched in the standard way of controlling things?
Why did the waggle wand succeed
Why did the finger touch screen devices succeed
Why did the accelarometer devices succeed

These are all recent new input methods that found instant success, thus the idea ppl/companies wont accept new input methods is false.

Im still waiting for these game ideas that can save kinect, come on people you can resurrect the product.
Since it looks like ppls heads are empty I'll start - Heres one I just thought of
'boob fondler' - Youve gotta manipulate the onscreen ladies breasts getting her excitement levels to a limit:
Sure to be a hit

 

[Cyan]

But what about Rare? What about Crytek? Whole teams did work on kinect games. You make it sound so easy...but the best devs in the world didn't manage it.

I don't know...I still hope that a (indie) dev puts out a great kinect game.

In my opinion, Crytek couldn't find the key that determines the winning factor for a device like Kinect, since they are very good at technology driven engines, but are traditionalists when it comes to controls.

Rare was kinda forced into programming for Kinect. It's not the same as making Kinect games by taking the initiative as an entrepreneurship.

Harmonix could be a potential candidate, and their Kinect games are amongst the most solid games on the Kinect.

Dance Central in fact made it into the top 100 games of the last generation according to a list from IGN. It was placed 80 something in the end, but still. Problem is that it is a niche and became a de facto standard as to what to expect from Kinect.

Kinect would need a Wii devoted to it, perhaps, and nothing else, but Nintendo played safe there and had buttons and standard controls.

Maybe Kinect will be useful in the future for that, if controls can be programmed to work on a 3D hologram in front of the player.

Plus, what dobwal says makes sense. AAA big fishes are going to play safe and create only what makes money.

It's the smallest, hungry developers who can be the force bringing the innovative experiences to Kinect, 'cos they don't have as much to lose and start small.

Publishers could care less about far more possibilities in terms of technical capabilities. These are the same pubs that mostly sat on the sideline when android and iOS first came along until relatively unknown devs start generating millions in app revenue.

And most of their early offerings were mostly just porting over physical console controllers schemes which made for crappy controls. Hardly anything novel or different that made good use of touch screens.

The fact that most of these pubs can't make Kinect work well isn't surprising. I doubt very seriously that many pubs are giving any of their devs some XB1 devs units with Kinects and telling them to have at it.

I held out hope for Kinect as a standard because I felt given enough incentive (100% of XB1 userbase) to develop for Kinect, its was the indies not pub backed devs that had the ability to make Kinect shine. Focusing on what Kinect does well and then using their imagination and creativity to produce titles that don't look like your everyday console title.

If MS had poured millions into driving indies to dev on Kinect v.1, we probably would have far more cases of "good" Kinect games.

 

[Davros]

Since it looks like ppls heads are empty I'll start - Heres one I just thought of
'boob fondler' - Youve gotta manipulate the onscreen ladies breasts getting her excitement levels to a limit:
Sure to be a hit

You mean like this ? Once again the p.c leads the way
yes you know you want it...

ladies and gentlemen i proudly present.....

Frontal Assault
"The idea is to perform various moves on breasts. The move icons float to the screen and you must make the move before the icon disappears. Lose too many icons and the game ends."



http://fa.xmunkki.org/

 

[joker454]

Ok, but than we can sum the discussion (Shifty and Co) up like this: given reasonable time and money, it is obviously not possible up to now to make a special novel kinect controlled game that works and makes fun, i.e. a kinect killer app.

Who's fault is it?! Cell, the lazy devs, or Sony? Oh, sorry...this was another discussion some time ago...

Maybe console devs just can't figure out new ideas suitable to kinect, or are just not willing to take the risk. On Steam developers always try new things which leads to cool funky and fresh games like The Stanley Parable, Gunpoint, Gone Home, etc, whereas looking at current console titles to me they mostly look like rehashes of the same old stuff. It's status quo all over again, with fresh graphics. Who knows maybe that's all they know how to do, bring our revision 3, 4 or 5 of existing titles with new graphics. I think one of MS's biggest mistakes in that regard was not fully opening up kinect to indies from way before launch. Indies may have ended up with far better game ideas than the AAA studios could have. To me anyways it seems like indies is where the new ideas I play are coming from, whereas AAA studios so far just seem to want to reuse old ideas to push new visual tech.

Or worded a much simpler way, maybe kinect was just a poor fit for typical console developers.

 

[zed]

Combo!
Yeah something like that, Im sure theres a market. Combine this with VR & theres a massive market