Microsoft's UK studio Rare originally made prototype button controllers for Kinect, as it struggled with the early concept of peripheral-free motion control.
According to Nick Burton, development director for Kinect at Rare, it wasn't until the first successful game prototypes began drawing a crowd in-house that it dawned on the team that there were multiple ways to interact without holding moulded plastic.
"I remember those first few weeks of us having the tech in November 2008, we were going 'but you've got to have a button!' To the extent that we built little buttons that you could hold in your hands, just to try it," he said in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz.
"The acid test turned out to be a couple of prototypes we worked out quickly. We weren't thinking about sports, these were just ideas we were chucking around for three or four days at a time. We had a little goal kick game that was to test accuracy of avatars and it worked well because we could place a virtual ball in front of the player. And at the same time as that, we realised that kicking doesn't involve a button, there doesn't have to be a button press.
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