The non-standard game interfaces discussion thread (move, voice, vitality, etc.)

[BadTB25]

Co-worker today said he couldn't find a Kinect (bundle or standalone) despite looking all last week at both military exchanges, 2 Gamestops and other smaller department stores and retailers...this is Guam though, so maybe not that surprising.

BTW, finally beat Boxing in Professional difficulty. I'm not up to playing Champion yet as passing professional was very frustrating. Any ideas on why power punches are getting through despite my blocking in the correct area.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

So I went and checked Amazon for shits and giggles. And the Kinect Sensor is selling for 195+ USD new and used. Kinect 250 GB bundle is going for 485+ USD new. Amazon itself is out so those represent various individuals and e-tailers that sell through Amazon.

Looking for Moves as Christmas presents, it the same scenario. The official channels are dried out and independent sales are getting a bit of a markup, both on the starter kit and standalone controllers. It's not a huge markup in the way the consoles were selling for when launched, but all the motion devices are seeing demand pushing prices up. At the moment it looks like whoever sells the most will be whoever makes the most!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Just found this account of Kinect in Japan, which echoes the problems MS have laways had in making an impact over there. I'm surprised the Japanese haven't taken to Kinect. Maybe MS needs a Japanese style "mental hyperactive psychedelic motion gaming with skirt lifting and monster collecting". Although selling a quarter of Move's numbers is good given install base differences, and you'd think from word-of-mouth, interest would increase.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Not surprising. Japanese resistance to a western console combined with generally smaller apartments makes it difficult.

Although to be fair even in small apartments (generally studio apartments), there should be room, as in cases like that the bed is just a futon matress that is folded up and stored in a closet when not sleeping. So if the person is at least somewhat neat and organized, there should be room for Kinect.

Regards,
SB

 

[patsu]

Apple's products do ok there. I remember AR toolkit was hot there a couple of years ago. The tech savvy community should have seen and liked motion gaming + augmented reality titles.

Kinect adopted similar celeb endorsement and heavy TV ads promotion in Japan. The press covered it.

Kinect may be limited by it's demand for space. And the retailers may have lost interest in 360 because of low sales. The consumers seem to be more keen on portable gaming in general. Remember Kojima mentioned that his son didn't consider him a game designer until he delivered a PSP game ?

 

[egoless]

Delete

 

[patsu]

I don't think the Japanese deceived MS ^_^.

It's the market research team/company that gave MS the wrong analysis. The Japanese probably don't care. At the beginning, 360 has very similar entertainment + gaming vision as PS3. Sony is probably more in tuned with the Japan market than MS. e.g. The consumers there may prefer Blu-ray discs vs digital movies, especially DVR feature (since all standalone BR players are DVRs). If online gaming requires subscription in Japan, the known to be thrifty population may not fall for it, etc.

Even for PS3, it seemed like a slow start compared to portable gaming and Wii.

 

[patsu]

Amazon has good deals for some Move software:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=24576402&postcount=5541

Start the Party $24.99 on amazon gogogo!
http://www.amazon.com/Start-Party-Pl...K87THE78 GHGN

Time Crisis: Razing Storm 31.99
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Crisis-Ra...D35PKJH2 FZBF

John Daly's ProStroke Golf 19.99
http://www.amazon.com/John-Dalys-Pro...295F1JX5 D7M1

If you play Golf, I can recommend ProStroke Golf, the tracking is pretty authentic. But don't count on it to teach Golf.

Start the Party is good for kids but I generally treat them like little adults (Sports Champions, Tumble, etc)

Haven't tried Razing Storm.

 

[mrcorbo]

Aye, I can understand the the market forces at work here. But I'd imagine the title at 75-85 USD would sell more than at 100 USD. That's assuming the 40-50 USD price premium compared to other exercise titles is due to the included hardware.

Ah well, thanks to EA, I went ahead and ordered the Biggest Loser workout program. I was originally going to get Sports Active 2.0 first (even at 100 USD), but due to this, as well as the discrepency in number of exercises, I went the other direction.

Your Shape and Biggest Loser should hold me quite well until Sports Active 2.0 is heavily discounted.

Regards,
SB

A quick word on EA Sports Active 2.0 for Kinect since I did get it and have been using it for a week or so.

The software is well-designed in terms of the overall structure. This really is a virtual personal trainer and it creates workouts for you each day that take into account the workouts you have done on previous days moving the focus around to different body parts so no one area gets overworked while other parts get neglected. This is great.

OTOH, I'm finding the specific Kinect implementation to be glitchy to the point of being frustrating. I frequently, especially when doing floor exercises, find that the software "loses me" (stopping the exercise in mid stream and instructing you to stand so it can recognize you) and it will also inexplicably decide that it needs to stop (again in the middle of an exercise) and re-show me the tutorial video for that exercise. These are both jarring to say the least and really disrupt your focus. This is the only Kinect software that has had these kinds of problems in my space.

Despite this, I still fell that this is the best of the fitness packages available. The real-time feedback you get from the pulse sensor is very valuable IMO and the software will do a weekly fitness test that has you do a baseline set of exercises and then cool-down to allow your heart rate to return to a resting pace. It uses these measurements (your heart rate during the exercises and the time required for your heart to return to normal) to determine your level of fitness and to measure progress from week to week.

 

[liolio]

Eurogamer review of EA sport active baks up your pov, the software is buggy.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Yeah it is a space hog, but so is Move no?

Depends on the title. Something like Archery is very stationary. and the party games don't need loads of room. Move only needs see the controller, not the whole person, so you can stand closer to the camera with it chopping off your legs and head, but still play. And then there are simple pointy type games, like Beat Sketchers and that aeroplane landing game and RUSE. So really, for party games space remains an issue, but I assume in Japan when people have a party, they do it somewhere where there is space and don't squeeze 6 people into a cupboard! In contrast, Kinect's titles at the moment all seem space heavy without any localised input games AFAIK, plus even those that don't need much movement still need a full body view, don't they? Can Kinect get a fix on just the top half of a person, or does the lack of legs throw it off?

 

[Arwin]

Yeah it is a space hog, but so is Move no? Realistically if you don't have space for Kinect, will you really have space to use Move? You need room to swing those arms around one way or another. I mean does Sports Champions really work well in a typical Japanese room?

Move goes from 50cm from the TV to about 6 feet max, depending on the title. Sports champions is playable at 1.5m for a tall guy like me (1.92m), where table tennis is the only game that gives you some issues once you play at the Champions level, but I doubt many people even unlock that. All the other events are less demanding, although Beach Volleyball, being as tall as I am, can sometimes be a bit of a bother when I stretch my arms out fully (slight adjustment of the camera or just sitting down helps, or just don't stretch out as far). The Fight seems to work better at a slightly bigger distance (1.6-1.8m) and Singstar Dance, if you want to see your full dance performance, is basically the same as Kinect, but otherwise can do with much less space if you're just interested in your performance, which requires more left/right movement than up/down or forward/backward, and the camera basically sees a 16:9 image, so that helps.

All other games are fine with much less. A great party game like Start-the-Party for instance really doesn't require much space at all. I play it sitting down, and kids can stand and be a little closer to the TV (they have to be, or else they can't reach ... ). All the games that just use the gyro c.s. need barely more space than a DS3, and games like RUSE that do use the full move still allow you to play sitting down - all you need to do in the game is be able to reach forward.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Depends on the title. Something like Archery is very stationary. and the party games don't need loads of room. Move only needs see the controller, not the whole person, so you can stand closer to the camera with it chopping off your legs and head, but still play. And then there are simple pointy type games, like Beat Sketchers and that aeroplane landing game and RUSE. So really, for party games space remains an issue, but I assume in Japan when people have a party, they do it somewhere where there is space and don't squeeze 6 people into a cupboard! In contrast, Kinect's titles at the moment all seem space heavy without any localised input games AFAIK, plus even those that don't need much movement still need a full body view, don't they? Can Kinect get a fix on just the top half of a person, or does the lack of legs throw it off?

If I sit close to Kinect, on the floor, about 3 or four feet away, it still shows my hands being tracked on the depth buffer image of the dashboard.

Whether that is doing partial skeletal tracking or not, I don't know. I'm really not sure how it does the hand tracking for the UI, but it works when I sit that close. It'll detect my wave etc. As for the games themselves, like Sports, it'll tell me I'm outside the play area and tell me to move away.

 

[patsu]

Hands tracking does not need skeleton tracking. It'd be like PSEye's Operation:Creature Feature. Unfortunately, MS are marketing their skeleton tracking system heavily, which happens to be a space hog.

Sony's pitch is a lot more general, from desktop RTS to absolute 3D position, 1-1 tracking.

The first (more focused) approach is more effective but it may cut out other people. The latter is more diluted and wishy-washy (more confusing). In any case, my point was don't blame the consumers as an easy excuse. OTOH, I also think that it's too early to judge both systems.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Hands tracking does not need skeleton tracking. It'd be like PSEye's Operation:Creature Feature. Unfortunately, MS are marketing their skeleton tracking system heavily, which happens to be a space hog

Well, the image shown on the dashboard is the depth image, and it shows your hands glowing when it can see them. If I move my hands too close to the unit, maybe less than 2 feet away, my hands turn black and disappear. Otherwise, if I move them away, it shows my hands glowing, which means it has identified my hands. It also works with the lights off. So it seems to be using the depth image for the hand tracking. Maybe they have a simplified way of doing the hand tracking, or maybe they do a partial skeleton. I don't know. I bet I could check on the calibration screen to see how it handles missing legs. I'll try that tomorrow.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Official Japanese numbers, 26,000 units first weeks sales. They reckon half as many sold in first week versus Move, which is good given install base. Shows Kinect was at a higher interest level. But 26,000 versus the millions sold elsewhere is insignificant.

 

[patsu]

Well, the image shown on the dashboard is the depth image, and it shows your hands glowing when it can see them. If I move my hands too close to the unit, maybe less than 2 feet away, my hands turn black and disappear. Otherwise, if I move them away, it shows my hands glowing, which means it has identified my hands. It also works with the lights off. So it seems to be using the depth image for the hand tracking. Maybe they have a simplified way of doing the hand tracking, or maybe they do a partial skeleton. I don't know. I bet I could check on the calibration screen to see how it handles missing legs. I'll try that tomorrow.

As far as I know, Kinect only uses the IR camera for motion tracking of any kind. That's why it can be used in the dark. I don't think the Dashboard needs to track the entire body though. So it can use a different algorithm if MS want to.

The games MS launched (Dance Central, Your Shape, Kinect Adventures, Sports) are full body tracking games. The consumers will need enough space to play.

 

[Nesh]

I cant find Move anywhere! I want to get a second controller! Is this a problem found in EU in general? Its been around a month and they are still waiting for shipments they tell me!! WTF

 

[manux]

I cant find Move anywhere! I want to get a second controller! Is this a problem found in EU in general? Its been around a month and they are still waiting for shipments they tell me!! WTF

Problem in general. Demand is higher than production. Some places still have plenty of moves and some have had nothing for quite some time. Check amazon, they usually have moves to sell.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Amazon have had for a while, except by independent sellers. Currently they have Move bundles in for £59, but standalone controllers are going for £46. If you're willing to pay over the odds, eBay and independent sellers hhve them available, but if you don't want to get ripped off, you'll need to wait and get lucky. Perhaps a preorder off somewhere like ShopTo will net you a well priced Move when stock comes in?

Edit: Just checked ShopTo. Kinect's are in stock for £125, £150 with two more games . Move's available to preorder (surely it's just an order?) for £32, bundle for £45. Play.com has Moves for £35, "usually dispatched 4-5 days". Bundle for £50, same waiting on stock. Kinect in stock for £130.