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

[liolio]

I'm guessing $399 because Sony went for $399 for their Move bundle. I'm not entirely convinced the 360 will have a price cut this year. If there's a price cut, then drop my guess to $350 or so. I really don't think MS is going to loss-lead on this: I think the days of loss-leading on hardware are over, for everyone.

Well the 360 is 5 years old and just went thought a massive redesign. For a company that would be out for market shares I think the price I gave are reasonable. Point is Ms has other activities in the ED division that need major investments/losses.
When I read that I also wonder if there will be at some point another console generation. OK they can launch something else before "EOLing" the 360 but as time passes does it makes sense?
I've less and less certainties on the matter. It becomes every years tougher to compete on price and perfs with PC parts, coming with something acceptable will require an almost impossibly huge R&D effort. Will Intel or AMD have real intensive to sell their products at low price to console manufacturers...
I really wonder if Ms sees the 360 as a place holder to prevent Sony to regain too much traction on the core gaming segment. If they can make money in the mean time they are happy. It makes sense but for a company with Ms deep pocket and usually long term strategy it doesn't make much sense, why let a opponent recover if you think you'll have to fight again and while you have the chance to hurt beyond recovery? So they may be considering another long term strategy.

Anyway I should have remove the doom and gloom stuff after I wrote my post as whether it should make sense or not 399$/€ may happen for an elite/kinect and your prediction could prove accurate.

EDIT
It's also why I think Sony should have stayed with proprietary tech, they entered a fight they could not win if not against MS but also ATI Nvidia Intel, etc.
"Winning" with proprietary tech (which was easy imho) could have push further the PC/console convergence.

 

[AzBat]

BTW, before everybody thinks Microsoft made the $150 price official, this was posted by Stephen Toulouse on Twitter:

Guys I have nothing to do with Kinect Pricing. All prices now *no matter what the retail source* are placeholders. We've not announced. :>

Tommy McClain

 

[obonicus]

The $150 price hasn't been announced, but it's shown up on Microsoft's own store. If the price changes we'll discuss that, but for now everything (and really, everything) is pointing towards $150.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Doesn't look like it comes with the AC adapter for older 360 units. The power supply cable would be the cable for the new 360 slims. That's not a great thing. I'm ok with $150, but paying for a separate AC adapter would kind of bother me. Luckily I have a slim, but I think the adapter should be in the box.

I'm also a little worried about the 6 feet of space. Basically you need 6-10 feet of clear space between you and the tv, so you have room to move around. I think a lot of people would be moving their coffee tables out of the way to play. For me, I may not even be able to get it. I'm looking for a new place, and most likely it will be smallish sized and a 6-10 ft area between me and the tv is not likely. I probably barely have that much room as it is.

 

[liolio]

interesting
Which pretty much invalidate what I said previously. Till I have a tough time understanding Ms strategy lately.

 

[obonicus]

$150 to manufacture seems too high. Is that somehow considering R&D costs? I guess we'll have to wait until November for a tear-down to see what's there besides commodity parts.

 

[joker454]

But then again MS thought BOB was a good idea too lol

Well...Bill Gate's at the time girlfriend (now wife) was running the Bob project, so not too many people were gonna question her

interesting
Which pretty much invalidate what I said previously. Till I have a tough time understanding Ms strategy lately.

$150 in build costs? Man that seems high, but ok.

 

[patsu]

$150 as MSRP sounds reasonable. May be able to find cheaper bundles. It really depends on the total package (e.g., subscribe to XBL Fitness Program for X years and get Kinect accessory free or heavily discounted).

Over time (or to jumpstart demand), MS should be able to adjust the pricing to fit the demand, so I wouldn't be too concerned. The $150 tag may be for pricing research (Can you preorder now ?). The initial standalone unit supply should be low.

The specs is more interesting:

What comes in the box
Kinect sensor for Xbox 360
Power supply cable
User's manual
Wi-Fi extension cable

Before you buy
Here's what you'll need to use the Kinect sensor:
Xbox 360 console
6 feet (1.8 meters) between you and your television for play space†
You!

This is the first time I hear from MS sources about the tracking distance.

Technical specifications
Color VGA Motion Camera 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30FPS
Depth Camera 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30FPS
Array of 4 microphones supporting single speaker voice recognition

Earlier in the thread, we wondered about using the mic array to track multiple speakers. Right now it's advertised for 1 speaker only.

The video camera framerate is surprisingly low. Doesn't it have a high framerate capture for motion tracking ? EyeToy is also 640 x 480 @ 30fps. PSEye is 640 x 480 @ 60Hz (320 x 240 up to 120Hz).

 

[Carl B]

Yeah the report linked by Interface in post #93 would reflect the $150 build cost including a premium to account for the R&D costs of the tech and the Primesense acquisition. Not the typical way of coming to a peripheral price, but they probably want to see how many they can move at that premium before dropping it down. Of course, with something like Kinect, the stronger an impact you can have at launch the better for its future prospects in general. I'm sure there are two camps within MS on the issue.

 

[patsu]

I'm pretty sure it's a place holder for price research right now since MS hasn't announced anything official. The only "real" stuff there is the spec.

It'll probably sell through the first batch of inventory quickly (bundled and standalone) because of large 360 install base. In other words, if they can sell out @ $150, why not ?

 

[specwarGP2]

What comes in the box
Kinect sensor for Xbox 360
Power supply cable
User's manual
Wi-Fi extension cable

What the heck is a wi-fi extension cable? also the description makes it sound like it doesnt come with a power supply required for fat 360s.

 

[AzBat]

What the heck is a wi-fi extension cable? also the description makes it sound like it doesnt come with a power supply required for fat 360s.

Remember the leak of the Project Natal Quick Start Guide back in April?

You'll see there that there is a cable that connects to the proprietary Kinect port. The power adapter looks to be part of the cable in addition to the USB connector.

Tommy McClain

 

[zed]

Color VGA Motion Camera 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30FPS

This doubles a a normal camera I take it, if so thats what the nintendo DSi has.
Surely this cant be right, its not the year 2000! It makes me a bit suspicious about all the details, perhaps theyre gonna do what they did with the xbox360 + 256mb ram. At the last minute upgrade it.

 

[Arwin]

Well, maybe they wanted to stay compatible with Vision, maybe they didn't think they'd be able to do more than 30fps doing the calculations needed anyway, or maybe they'll manage to get the price to $99 at launch because of this after all ... who knows?

Meanwhile, Kinect manages to get some more mainstream media coverage:

http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/blogs/2010/06/kudo-tsunoda-demos-microsoft-kinect/

Great call on not wearing the sunglasses, by the way. Second time I see him without, and it's just so much better.

EDIT: some video of the Move section, with a bit of SingStar Dance, Table Tennis, The Fight (which looks a little more one-to-one and direct now than previous, I think), the crazy office guy on an office chair downhill game, and that other weird game with people flying through the air (forgot the name)

 

[Squilliam]

hopefully the console bundle comes with a few games.

Right now you get games with the wii at $250

It really depends on what people get, the comparisons are getting quite complicated. For instance a Wii + Wii Fit = $300+ whereas a Kinect enabled Xbox 360 could offer the same functionality for around the same price too. Roughly 50% of Wii owners get their console with Wii Fit IIRC.

World wide ? Not a chance . I think world wide they need to do 10m its first year if not more. 5m mabye for Nov -december world wide then thats not so bad.

Thats a lot of product, if we consider Kinect + Xbox 360 = new console then the userbase growth would be almost unprecedented. That would definitely be enough to peg the userbase of Kinect enabled Xbox 360s at over 20M come year end 2011.

Personaly I'm holding out hope they put this at $120-$130. Doesn't sound much cheaper but when you compare $120 to the move's price its exactly on par with the move bundle + navigator . $130 is just a tad bit more.

Alternatively a $99-119 price point means they could swing a $199-249 Arcade/Kinect bundle if we assume the Arcade could infact be priced at $149 if they so wished.

If they get 4 players working in launch games advertising can make the case that its $120-$130 to play 4 players vs $250-$270 in move costs or about the same on the wii(if not mabye more)

I think comparing directly to Move is a red herring. I don't think they are particularly interested in relative costing between Move and Kinect when they are looking at the Wii as their major competitor in this space and beyond that to the unattached households who may be drawn in by the other features they offer.

If the price really is $150, then we're talking about bundles at >= $300, maybe even a return of the old price of $399. I'm not convinced they can do that many bundles at that price point, not for the audience they're targetting.

It depends on what people value the experience at. However since its been reiterated that the $149 price point may very well be a place-holder then perhaps the $299 and $399 prices are place holders as well.

 

[(((interference)))]

Earlier in the thread, we wondered about using the mic array to track multiple speakers. Right now it's advertised for 1 speaker only.

The video camera framerate is surprisingly low. Doesn't it have a high framerate capture for motion tracking ? EyeToy is also 640 x 480 @ 30fps. PSEye is 640 x 480 @ 60Hz (320 x 240 up to 120Hz).

It is getting ridiculous how watered down the final product is from what what we were originally promised.

Why the hell does it cost 150? And why couldn't they use a 1.3 MP 60hz camera and leave it to the devs to decide what configuration they'd run it in, allowing them to trade off processing for better accuracy.

The fact that it can only track a single speaker (and it appears it can't even distinguish between that speaker and other peoples voice's for spoken commands )
That pretty much rules out that Buzz style quiz show they were showing off in the E3 09 trailer.

 

[AzBat]

It is getting ridiculous how watered down the final product is from what what we were originally promised.

Why the hell does it cost 150? And why couldn't they use a 1.3 MP 60hz camera and leave it to the devs to decide what configuration they'd run it in, allowing them to trade off processing for better accuracy.

The fact that it can only track a single speaker (and it appears it can't even distinguish between that speaker and other peoples voice's for spoken commands )
That pretty much rules out that Buzz style quiz show they were showing off in the E3 09 trailer.

Not really. Kinect could have just been tracking hands & doing facial recognition to determine what voice is talking. We already know the latter will work since that's how you log in to the dashboard.

I will say this though that although they may not be delivering on some the experiences they showed off last year for this year's launch, there's nothing that says that wasn't a vision that they planned for in future updates or games. Some people have no patience I swear. Again, last year was the announcement of a long term vision. This year was the announcement for what to expect at this year's launch. One doesn't preclude the other.

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

Not really. Kinect could have just been tracking hands & doing facial recognition to determine what voice is talking. We already know the latter will work since that's how you log in to the dashboard.

It may not work. I was thinking how Sony could do it for PSEye since the latter has a 4 mic array too. No depth info is needed in this use case.

In a game like Buzz!, all the players and their helpers will be shouting answers and waving hands at the same time. I don't even know if the speech recognition can work under such noisy environment.

 

[(((interference)))]

Not really. Kinect could have just been tracking hands & doing facial recognition to determine what voice is talking. We already know the latter will work since that's how you log in to the dashboard.

That's possible if it can track 4 or more people at a time. But then again, it doesn't work while your sitting down, so i'm unconvinced.

I will say this though that although they may not be delivering on some the experiences they showed off last year for this year's launch, there's nothing that says that wasn't a vision that they planned for in future updates or games. Some people have no patience I swear. Again, last year was the announcement of a long term vision. This year was the announcement for what to expect at this year's launch. One doesn't preclude the other.

Perhaps, but the fact that they haven't yet managed to get it working while sitting down (let alone any of the other 'experiences') is serious cause for concern. If they don't have the basic stuff working yet, how long til we get the more complex stuff that was promised

 

[eastmen]

$150 as MSRP sounds reasonable. May be able to find cheaper bundles. It really depends on the total package (e.g., subscribe to XBL Fitness Program for X years and get Kinect accessory free or heavily discounted).

Over time (or to jumpstart demand), MS should be able to adjust the pricing to fit the demand, so I wouldn't be too concerned. The $150 tag may be for pricing research (Can you preorder now ?). The initial standalone unit supply should be low.

The specs is more interesting:



This is the first time I hear from MS sources about the tracking distance.



Earlier in the thread, we wondered about using the mic array to track multiple speakers. Right now it's advertised for 1 speaker only.

The video camera framerate is surprisingly low. Doesn't it have a high framerate capture for motion tracking ? EyeToy is also 640 x 480 @ 30fps. PSEye is 640 x 480 @ 60Hz (320 x 240 up to 120Hz).

The 4 mic's can work alone . It jut supports single speaker rec