iFixit Tears Down Microsoft's Kinect For Xbox 360

alphadogg writes "Microsoft's new hands-free Kinect game controller is packed with four microphones, two autofocus cameras and a motion detector chip that together make for one heck of a complex toy, according to iFixit's initial teardown of the device. 'We haven't been this excited to get our hands on new hardware since the iPad,' says Kyle Wiens, CEO of the company. 'The way that we interact with computers is (finally) evolving, and Kinect is unlike any hardware we've ever taken apart. In fact, the only thing we've ever taken apart that has anywhere close to this many sensors is Pleo, the dinosaur robot.' iFixit describes Kinect as 'a horizontal bar of sensors connected to a small, motorized pivoting base.' The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of millions of dollars of research into can be purchased separately from the Xbox 360 or as part of a bundle. A Prime Sense PS1080-A2 is at the heart of Kinect's motion detection capabilities, as it connects to all of Kinect's sensors and processes images of your game room's color and scope before shooting them over to the Xbox. iFixit couldn't immediately identify all of the chips within the box, so plans to update its teardown."

Comments

cost cutting

[flyingfsck]

So MS can reduce the cost of the device in version 2 by dropping half the sensors?

Re:cost cutting

[jrobot]

really?

Microsoft can sell these at a loss and make it back with game sales.
kinect version 2 will likely include MORE sensors what with M$ buying Canesta http://canesta.com/
who build time-of-flight optical depth sensors...

anyone have specs on microsoft's IR CMOS sensor in this thing?
TFA lists X853750001 / VCA379C7130

Re:cost cutting

[cynyr]

not if adafruit has their way, Lots of these will end up in robots and such. even better if i can get a few below cost. Microsoft has already said that they are "against anyone tampering with their products" Ohh well I sure hope they know better than to sell at a loss...

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/

Re:cost cutting

[sznupi]

The processing of data from Kinect apparently happens on the X360 - I'm not sure how it would give anything better than 1-3 (depending on how much of the functionality you want to recreate in your own software) inexpensive webcams. Unless one cares about looks or quite limited range of tilt...

Re:cost cutting

[tibit]

Tampering? LOL. I bought it, I own it, it is a physical product. For all I care they deserve a middle finger for even suggesting that what I do with their kinect box would be tampering.

Re:cost cutting

[StikyPad]

You seem to be confused. Sony is the mfr. that removes features to lower costs. MS removes your ability to access software-driven features like multiplayer, Facebook, and Netflix unless you pay for a subscription. True, this is a bit like arguing over who's the fattest kid at fat camp, but there it is.

The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of mil

[santax]

The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of millions of dollars of research into.... that sentence is a lie... lol. And the kinect system is everything but groundbraking. Everything MS said itself about the WII still holds up but even worse. I can use the WII a meter away from the screen. Try to do that with that MS crap, that hasn't caused hundreds of millions, but like, 20, 30 bucks in total, taking prior art into account.

Failure in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinect is going to be hyped to hell and back by Microsoft's marketing department. Be prepared to puke from all the commercials plastered all over the place.

Then watch it fail when used in real life by actual gamers.

Re:Failure in the making

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Then watch it fail when used in real life by actual gamers.

No "actual gamer" is going to buy this device. Most that might have been inclined have probably already been burned by the Playstation Eye(Toy). The Kinect has already been and will be lambasted by the traditional gaming community.

But as the Wii proved, "actual gamers" don't actually matter. This device is being marketed to just about everyone else, and will likely sell as to parents and the like as a supposed mini-console to a younger gamer. At least for this Christmas; I fully expect shops to be flooded with second hand Kinects come February.

Re:Failure in the making

[DrXym]

Then watch it fail when used in real life by actual gamers.

If you think it's annoying to get up and load a disc in a console and then wait for it to start, just imagine how annoying it would be to rearrange your room before starting a game. That's assuming your room can be arranged. Anyone wishing to use it in an apartment, flat, council house, bedroom, basement, or basically any room which does not provide 2 meters of clear space in front of the device is screwed. Perhaps we'll see a blip in the housing market as people move or build extensions in order to play their Kinect.

Then in order to play you get to stand up the whole time. That's par for the course for a dance / fitness game but a serious limitation for anything else. Imagine standing up right for any amount of time, arms out in thin air pretending to steer a car for example. Don't scratch your nose or you'll crash into the wall.

Re:Failure in the making

[geekoid]

I am an actual gamer. IF this works, I will be considering it. I don't not own an xbox.

Re:Failure in the making

[BlackBloq]

Farmville is worth more then EA... Nuff said.

Re:Failure in the making

[HarvardAce]

I am an actual gamer. IF this works, I will be considering it. I don't not own an xbox.

Was the double negative intentional?

Re:Failure in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure what you think an "actual gamer" is, but I bought it. My currently most played game is Halo Reach, before that it was L4D and L4D2 on the xbox (ZOMG CONSOLES SUCK). I still fire up my PC to play random MMO 342, team fortress, the HL series, and any of the awesome deals Steam puts on. I may be a bit of a Valve fanboy.

I enjoyed using Kinect after getting it last night. I walked into Walmart and they had around 8 left. This probably isn't weird since we have 4 Walmarts in a 5 mile radius. I didn't bother to check gamestop or bestbuy. There is a small amount of lag that I noticed while playing Kinect Adventures, but nothing that bugged me too much. I enjoyed using the Kinect Dashboard and voice controls, but there is a ton of improvement that needs to be done there (no Netflix support? WTF?). I only got through one round of adventures so I can't call the experience through and plan on playing around some more this weekend.

I guess I'm just not hardcore enough anymore to hate motion gaming.

Re:Failure in the making

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an 'actual gamer' and have been since before most slashdotters could say 'computer' let alone use one. I am part of the traditional gaming community. I have a kinect on pre-order.

I think what you mean is no 'self-important teenager with delusions that their ill-informed opinion on anything matters' is going to buy this device.

do not want

[arkane1234]

Do not want... xbox* has been and always will be a cancer to be avoided. Simply having the name Microsoft attached seals the deal even after that, in my book.

Re:do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, then go away. Meanwhile the rest of us sane people who aren't fighting a religious war over software companies will continue to enjoy our games.

Re:do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that because you are probably too young to remember when Microsoft was* fighting a religious war against all other software companies.

* and still is.

Re:do not want

[Donoman]

It's not some religious thing. Fer reals, Microsoft makes shitty software. And on top of that, it has yet to invent something a competitor didn't do first. DOS... Zune... Windows... It's all "borrowed".

Re:do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

I say that because I am old enough to remember Microsoft since the early days of MS-DOS and I have never had a problem with them. I used MS-DOS, DR-DOS, PC-DOS, Novell DOS, OS/2, QNX, FreeBSD, Windows 9x, BeOS, Linux, Windows NT/2K/XP/Vista/7 according to my tastes and preferences for their relative times. Contrary to what nutjobs like you try to imply, Microsoft has never prevented me from being able to choose what I wanted to use. Sure, they had some pretty flaky OSes like Win9x, but for the most part I like their OSes because they do what I want them to do with minimal fuss.

Re:do not want

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft makes shitty software

Funny, I don't have any problems with Microsoft software. Works fine for me. Maybe you could name some software and the problems that you have with them?

it has yet to invent something a competitor didn't do first

I could say the same thing about Apple or Nintendo or most any other company. The fact is, almost everybody "borrows" from someone else. True technology pioneers like Intel, TI, Sony and Philips aren't ubiquitous.

Maybe I should play games on that Linux based Indrema console instead of the Xbox 360...oh wait...

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

English motherfucker, do you speak it?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[santax]

Next to french, german, greek and dutch? I speak it perfect. can't write it for shit though. How is your Dutch or German? Or French or Greek? I can both speak and write those without error... well.... bitch?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[timeOday]

Comparing the wii to the Kinect is absurd. One is an accelerometer, the other is a full-body skeletal pose estimator with probably 20 degrees of freedom. Like comparing a flashlight to an LCD display. The only question now is, will Kinect actually work?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[santax]

And yet the wii does work... without question... Why ask the question in the first place?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this English motherfucker speak what?

what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[dltaylor]

You've got a live multi-camera sensor scanning your living room and a closed-source box constantly communicating with the Internet, produced by a company that has repeatedly uploaded personal information to its servers from other products (read the EULA for any version of Windows later than 2KSP2, where you explicitly allow the practice). What else do/can/will they do with the images?

Re:what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[jdogalt]

*cough* every other mobile phone on the market *cough*

Re:what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[jpmorgan]

What personal information have they been stealing from people's computers again?

Re:what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[dltaylor]

The first example I can remember was back in the dial-up days when they would upload the installed software list and send targeted advertising to the users of WordPerfect, WordStar, Borland Compilers, Quicken, ... to offer discounts on the MS more-or-less equivalent.

Since then they have regularly captured similar data, and around Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4 (SP2 doesn't have it; SP4 does) added explicit language to the EULA granting them access to all data on a Windows system.

Nice to know they can scan your living room for market research purposes (if nothing else).

Re:what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[SteeldrivingJon]

"Nice to know they can scan your living room for market research purposes "

Google would put the images of your living room in Street View.

Re:what ELSE can MS do with the images?

[freeshoes]

I want to live in a World where I can zoom into any place on earth and have HD realtime video, anywhere including inside people's homes. People who disagree with this must be terrorists or doing bad stuff. Ok you give away your privacy, but its worth it to never be bored again, ever!

Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft couldn't even sell out their stock of Kinect at the launch party last night.

If they couldn't even find enough suckers from their die hard fanbase to buy all of the launch units there is no way this piece of junk is going to last long enough for cost reducing the components to matter.

Even the failed HD-DVD did better than this piece of crap addon.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Both newegg.com and amazon.com are currently sold out. I'd say that's pretty damn good.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[triffid_98]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that HD-DVD wasn't Microsoft's invention and the BluRay/HD war was in full swing when they designed their console. It's just that their format lost and Sony's won.

This is no different in principal than the PS3 motion controls. They're both trying to capitalize on the light-gun/motion controller market since that is extinct since the CRT/owned by the Wii.

I am by no means a fanboy of any console, but Microsoft is at least trying to do something much cooler than the 6-axis. I for one would love to see a modern console with proper motion controls (sorry Wii, but you're essentially a Gamecube with a reworked power-glove. Control is great, but CPU/Video performance-wise it isn't even comparable)

Both consoles lack compelling titles since they are expensive add-ons that people won't necessarily buy. It's like the Sega 32x all over again. Addons create console fragmentation and developers won't cater to it since they won't be guaranteed sufficient customers to make a profit.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I'm a sucker who bought the 32x and sure I loved virtua racer but wtf.. What do you even play on kinect?
I'm not about poo pooing technical achievements and I don't think of myself as a fanboi but I love my 360. I was inspired to learn to code so that I could try and make a game for the xbox live marketplace but as much as I want to see something awesome about kinect, even if it's nothing real but something in development, or some application I could believe would be awesome, I can't/don't.
Where the hell is the FUN that is supposed to be associated with this? I swear they got lost in the technical puzzle and thought that making the tech would immediately result in something fun like some kind of inherent epiphenomenon.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I wouldn't say I'm a member of their die-hard fanbase, but I have owned both iterations of their consoles and it's been a largely positive experience for me (in fact, I've owned three of this generation - upgraded one and then bought a spare for the bedroom). I can say Kinect is not even on my radar, to the extent I'm now avoiding games that claim to have kinect functionality built in because I suspect that will negatively impact the non-Kinect experience. I would go so far as to say this might actually drive a lot of their hardcore fans away from the consoles, if it wasn't for the fact that all console manufacturers seem to be doing the same crap right now.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[ThirdPrize]

I am sorry, but it's people like you who totally miss the point of Kinect. You probably bitched about Macs when they first came out because using a mouse would never be as fast as your DOS typing speed.

It is a control-less controller. You don't have to hold any wands, press any buttons or do anything like that. They have finally made it possible. V1 probably isn't perfect, as these things never are. However give it a couple of years, the price/size will get smaller and eventually they will start building things like this into TVs and monitors. Now imagine lying on the sofa flicking through the TVs EPG as it knows, relative to your head, what part of the screen your finger is on. That is the future.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, MS were stymied a little with BluRay - they wanted HD but they could hardly go with the competitor's product. Imagine the headlines when it got around that a fee from every XBOX sold was going directly to the company making the competing console. If they wanted a HD format disk I think they made the only choice they could at the time, although personally I've not missed it and I think they could have shaved a lot off the initial costs by simply ignoring this (it's already obsolete now you can install games directly to the hard disk, sure it's a hassle if I have to copy four disks instead of one to the HDD, but ultimately that's a one time effort, after which it makes zero difference to me what format the verification disk in the drive is - BluRay movies, again I've not bothered with a BR player so far and I haven't missed it, I now stream probably half of my content and this is likely to be closer to all my content by the time the next generation rolls around).

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[delinear]

I also wonder if they've even thought about the logistics. In all the adverts people are using it in massive open plan living spaces, that's just not a realistic representation of most people's homes (especially in countries where housing prices are high and living space has to be maximised, the UK, Japan, other parts of Europe, I can't speak for typical US homes as I only see fictional representations of them on TV and they're all either huge empty white spaces or cluttered messes). Personally the only way I could make this work is to throw away my coffee table - the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs, but the Kinect seems to need a massive open space just to get a decent field of view. I think people are going to either be put off by that (if they bother to think about it) or else they'll buy this, realise it's not practical and leave it in the box after the novelty wears off.

Beyond simple games for kids and stuff like video chat, I can't see a practical use for this, and if that's all you're using it for MS could have done it with a £15 webcam instead of a £150 sensor array. That doesn't mean it won't sell by the bucket-load, of course - I couldn't and still can't see a real use for the balance board but it didn't stop it selling millions and me spending the best part of a month hunting one down for my girlfriend the year after it was released.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[cptdondo]

I just don't see it living up to that promise. I watch my kids play wii - at first, they were jumping all over the place. Now they lay on the sofa, and "play tennis" by simply waving the controller a few inches.

Until the kinect is smart enough to figure out that *this* finger flick means hit the ball, and *this* finger flick means "shoo fly" and *this* motion means change the menu and *this* motion means I'm reaching for the chips, all while laying on the sofa and moving about 12" at most, it ain't gonna work.

My kids use games to kick back and do nothing; they don't use them as some sort of false athleticism. All the kinect hoo rah has been about how you will jump around your living room; at least in my house when we want to do something we go out and do it. When we want to lay on the sofa and veg, that's what we do. Where does the kinect fit in?

I think this will find uses MS never expected if it stays on the market long enough; pet monitors, some researcher will start using this to measure erosion in a channel, or something - but as a game controller I see a minimal market.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[BardicStorm]

Just as an observation, in the live demos they were doing in the Macy's windows in NYC a week or two ago there was only about 3-4 feet of width and roughly 6-7 feet of open space in front of the Kinect. I would say the demoer was roughly about 5' away, and had just enough room to swing her arms. That's a much better representation of a living room than most stage demos, and the Kinect was still picking up all her movements just fine.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

The AVERAGE modest American living room has about 250 sq ft or about 16' x 16' and that in my opinion is on the small side.My kinect is way more than adaquate for the space I have,(it's not huge)Where are you writing from?I know Japan, by sheer volume has to minimize personal space,but it sounds you are from the UK, you guys are that tight also?

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[sheehaje]

I'm one of those that wouldn't mind moving my coffee table to play. After all, I've spent thousands over the years keeping my gaming rig up to date, what is moving some furniture.

The big problems I see is input lag and the processing being done on the Xbox. That leaves less processing for the actual game itself, and the lag issue probably won't get much better until Microsoft releases new specs for the Xbox to handle the kinect.

My other curiosity is can I still play certain titles while sitting on a chair?

I will eventually get a unit. Hopefully a revision or two down the line. Microsoft aminosity aside, this is one of those big leap concepts that even if the initial device doesn't do what it should, it can still revolutionize a stagnant part of the industry. The mouse and keyboard/gamepad hasn't really changed much in years. This could change all that. Even the Wii motion technology is a bit primetive compared to something like this. It's fine for what it does, but doesn't cross over to computing very well. This does. Microsoft smartly put R&D money into this, because now they probably have a ton of patents on the next generation of periphreal.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[SuricouRaven]

Stepmania caught on at my house for a brief time. Cotton-Eye Joe has a series of star jumps in it that, when performed on the top floor, result in the ceiling of the lower floor shaking so much that dust falls off and a bulb was once broken.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[thoromyr]

Microsoft marketing aside, you do realize this has been done before? Sony UK came up with the EyeToy, a single manual focus camera with all processing done on the PS2. With the lower specs keep in mind that this was years ago and they were sold for a fraction of the Kinect's price. A better camera and one with auto focus would've helped it a lot. The Microsoft implementation with two cameras is a win -- but it all costs more as a result.

On occassions when we have guests with children we used to fire it up and put it on one of the minigames. People were always impressed by it, but I doubt there were any additional sales because in essence its a one-trick toy. It can be a very *fun* one-trick toy, don't get me wrong, but really, the scope of games that benefit from controlling via motion sense or putting the player on the screen is pretty minimal.

If Microsoft has a creative bone in them there will be some stunning games that rely on Kinect. Outside of that it is unlikely to have much impact.

But big concept? Not really. Innovative? Sony was here years ago.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[tibit]

the Wii balance board just about works because the sensor can look over the table at the control and doesn't need to know what I'm doing with my legs

Umm, what sensor can look over what? The Wii balance board is a 3-component force plate sensor (Fz, Mx, My). As long as you have enough room to stand on it without touching anything else, you're golden. It could be used in a port-a-potty if you didn't mind the smell.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[JonStewartMill]

I've had my Wii for 2.5 years now and I still use it the way it was intended -- standing up and flailing my arms like a madman. I know it's *possible* to 'game the game' by moving only your wrist, but it seems ... lame.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[sheehaje]

The camera's aside, the concept/innovation isn't the hardware, but how it recognises a person as an individual. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I did read a few articles on Project Natal/Kinect, and the major hurdle wasn't the 3D camera, the voice recognition, etc. It was putting it all together to recognise not only movement, but who a person is by many distinct factors, and following that person throughout the experience.

That to me is major innovation alone. I remember the EyeToy, and used one. This is not that. Maybe the EyeToy is a subset of this, as is a bunch of technology. The innovation of the Kinect is putting all this technology together in one package and getting it to work as a unified device.

I'm not totally sold this will be a great device for the Xbox, but this is the first thing I've seen in a long time that has really made me see a real shift in the way we interact with computers. The Wimote and the Sony move systems are really still tying people to a controller. In other words, this is the first device I've seen that really reaches out to the user, not the other way around. Even the EyeToy didn't do that.

I don't mean to sound like a Microsoft shrill in anyway. If Sony did this, or Apple, I would be just as curious, and hopeful. I just think the way they tied the technology together, and the way in which they plan to use it and have it interact is way too cool to dismiss as just another gimmick.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[index0]

"(sorry Wii, but you're essentially a Gamecube with a reworked power-glove. Control is great, but CPU/Video performance-wise it isn't even comparable)" I'm glad you enjoy those life like graphics in those new xbox 360 kinect games .... not. It is like MS tried to copy the input method and graphics style.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Gizzmonic]

The big problems I see is input lag and the processing being done on the Xbox. That leaves less processing for the actual game itself, and the lag issue probably won't get much better until Microsoft releases new specs for the Xbox to handle the kinect.

MS won't release an updated Xbox 360. There might be an Xbox 720 before too long, but if you have to wait that long before you're willing to buy a Kinect, that probably means it's a failure. Not to mention, who knows if the next-gen Xbox will be able to play your current-gen Kinect games?

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

...what is moving some furniture.

That's because some furniture in your case is just a coffee table. Try moving a two hundred pound couch bookended by two coffee tables with lamps, of which one table is wedged in the corner and blocked by a loveseat.

I'm sorry but the space requirements for this preclude me from buying it. Also, the fact that I don't own an xbox 360 also makes it a tough sell.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[BlackBloq]

There is another problem, noise. Imagine you live in an apartment and 5 people get this thing on the floor above you!

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[tlhIngan]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that HD-DVD wasn't Microsoft's invention and the BluRay/HD war was in full swing when they designed their console. It's just that their format lost and Sony's won.

Microsoft wasn't really in the HD-DVD camp. Either way, they win (HD-DVD and Blu-Ray require support for VC-1, Microsoft's video codec. Not to be confused with AVC, aka h.264). Sony however was more desperate - they bet the bank on Blu-Ray (which requires new production plants (HD-DVDs re-used existing DVD plants), their new console was forced to have it, etc), and they needed to win. The death of Blu-Ray would mean the loss of a big money-maker for a generation. Sure the PS3 could be modified to play games off DVD, but then it's a huge chunk of money putting in useless drives.

Sony needed to win the high-def war - there was no question about it. Microsoft didn't really care - HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, they get their royalties and patent license fees.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[StikyPad]

this is one of those big leap concepts that even if the initial device doesn't do what it should, it can still revolutionize a stagnant part of the industry. The mouse and keyboard/gamepad hasn't really changed much in years. This could change all that.

Say hello to my little friend.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[AdamWeeden]

Obligatory Penny Arcade

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[i_b_don]

Think of this more like an optical mouse. The optical mouse takes hundreds (thousands?) of pictures a second and looks for movement on the table surface. Does the CPU of your computer get bogged down processing all those pictures? No, of course not. That's because the logic is all controlled in the mouse itself. This has got to be the same. They must have a pretty decent custom designed chip that can handle the processing of the images and send the movement information back to the "PC" (AKA Xbox).

d

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[i_b_don]

People find the path of least resistance. They will figure out the minimum work that must be done and do that. You can see a million examples of this from how you drive to how to get ready for work/school in the morning. People will find the easiest way to play the game. People want that. Parents do not.

I believe the reason the Wii was so successful was because of two reasons, the first was cost, and the second was because the parents were sold on the idea that their kids would have to do more than just "lay on the sofa" and flick the controller back and forth. That the video gaming experience would have to involve movement and activity not just laying on the couch with a controller in hand. But now you're saying "bah, the kids can't defeat this feature and just be lazy blobs on their couch... it'll never sell." That's not a negative, that's an incredible positive!

Frankly if MS can pull this off, this will be the biggest step toward virtual reality we've taken in a long damn time. I'm no MS fanboi, but I'm optimistic about the possibilities for the technology. My kids are still pretty young, but if this works, they may be playing this type of gaming in the future rather than the mouse/keyboard FPS gaming I prefer.

d

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[cptdondo]

People find the path of most enjoyment for least effort.

We certainly didn't buy the Wii to get our kids off the sofa, we bought it because it was fun to play.

If MS (or you) are counting on this somehow "forcing" people off their butts and being active, it won't make it past the first week of sale. People will use it in whatever way gives them the most enjoyment, not because it's some pedantic / techno means of "exercise".

If you want exercise, join Crossfit, swim, run, ride bikes, be a competitive triathlete or swimmer - all of which we do.

If you want entertainment, get an entertainment console.

But don't try to convince me that kinect will somehow replace a Crossfit WOD, or enable my daughter to take second overall in a double triathlon, or let my son compete in the state championships.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, good to know. I work at the Kinect factory and we'll make one less. I wish everyone was this up front about telling us whether they're going to buy it or not.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Cederic]

Go to rightmove.co.uk and look at houses, flats and othe properties on there. 16x16 is a big room in the UK.

As a whole the UK is densely populated, but that includes the wide open spaces of Scotland and a several emptyish parts of England and Wales. So if you go for major population centres, the UK is very densely populated, bordering on stupid in some parts of London.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Cederic]

Can you add me to the "not buying" list please.

Do I get a discount for pre-booking my non-purchase in advance?

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[lantenon]

It's also important to recognize that Microsoft's investment in Kinect/Netal isn't solely about games; there's a significant component to their Xbox strategy that revolves around non-gaming applications ... demos / POCs I've seen around things like using the motion recognition components to rethink how video browsing and selection occurs on Netflix, as an example, show applications for this technology that sit outside of the "gaming" realm and more squarely in the court of the "entertainment center" that it appears Microsoft wants to develop.

Will Kinect be cool for video games? Maybe, maybe not. The more interesting question, to me, is, "Will Kinect challenge the entire idea of the 'remote control' for electronic devices?"

Only time will tell.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[rokstar]

No, it uses the Xbox to handle the processing and a significant portion as well. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/07/natal-to-use-10-15-percent-of-xbox-360-cpu-power/

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually no, at the time of the 360's HD-DVD player's launch, HD-DVD had more studios under them than BluRay did but there was a lot of studios (including some important ones like Disney) that didn't make a decision yet.

HD-DVD was the superior choice overall, they held virtually as much as BluRay discs and they were substantially cheaper as existing DVD factories could press HD-DVD discs with very little retooling. BluRay pretty much required totally new factories, increasing costs. The only reason Sony won was because:
1. They offered excessive incentives, even at an overall loss (Toshiba didn't have the deep pockets Sony did to pull that off)
2. Sony's in-house movie line-up is pretty decent
3. Disney signed on to BluRay (that was the biggest blow and it started a chain reaction that couldn't be stopped)
4. Sony learned from the mistakes of BetaMax and allowed porn to be sold on BluRay (ok so did HD-DVD but for the old timers, you'll all remember this was the deal breaker for BetaMax).

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[JonStewartMill]

I'm confused. Which method of play makes me a "toolbox'?

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

EyeToy is the same camera used by the PlayStation Move.

EyeToy camera can identify individuals & their emotional expressions, and it can track position & rotation of head & shoulders.

Getting it to track full-body movements is just a matter of software updates.

I don't know any games that do it yet, but today EyeToy/Move *could* allow strafing & looking in-game based on the leans of your body & turns of your head!

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Labcoat Samurai]

If you want exercise, join Crossfit, swim, run, ride bikes, be a competitive triathlete or swimmer - all of which we do.

That's right folks. If you want exercise, become a competitive athlete. Anything less is a waste of your time.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[cptdondo]

An athlete is by definition competitive. Read the dictionary definition.

I'm not competitive and I don't consider myself an athlete. I just work out hard and long - and not with a wiimote in my hand. My point is that if you want to be in shape, you need to exercise. Waving a wiimote around while pretending to play tennis is not a whole lot of exercise.

I think the wii was sold to parents as "your kid will be more active if you buy this" but it's a marketing ploy, not reality. It helps justify the purchase.

Re:Won't Be On The Market Long Enough To Matter

[Labcoat Samurai]

An athlete is by definition competitive. Read the dictionary definition.

So when I use the phrase, "competitive athlete" you feel the need to break my balls, but evidently it's ok for you to use the phrase "competitive tri-athlete"? Are there tri-athletes who are not athletes?

Besides, I took your advice and looked it up, and, no, not all athletes are competitive by definition. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines it as "a person who is trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina." That is, unless exercises are also competitive by definition.

My point was just that physical activity is not a bad thing, and if something like the Kinect can facilitate physical activity, we shouldn't throw it away as a waste of time simply because it isn't *enough* physical activity by some arbitrary standard

But... Does it blend? :)

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Worst Console Add-on Ever

[RingBus]

All the major gaming sites say the same things over and over again:

Input lag problems
Tracking problems causing games to loose sync with your movements
You need about 7 feet of distance from the device and another 3 foot or so around
Issues with lighting, clothing, and other environmental problems
Voice tracking only works half the time
Menu navigation is tedious and pointless and slower than just using a controller

No wonder Microsoft resorted to faking their two E3 demos of Kinect and refused to let the press have access to it before the thing went on sale. 500 million in advertising and PR isn't going to salvage this disaster of a console add-on.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[SoVi3t]

I've had no problems wit hit recognizing me, or any clothing related problems. My kinect sits on my desk, in front of my HDTV, and I have no problem with it reading me. ZERO problem with voice tracking, ever. Sure, it gets mixed up when you do things like cross your arms or hide them behind your back, but it isn't THAT much of an issue. Nothing an update wouldn't fix. And I still hope they release a handheld peripheral to assist with 3D movement in games, or to constantly recognize left/right hands.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[frnic]

And the Wright brothers couldn't fly around the world in their first plane either.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst console add-on ever?

No, not THE worst ever. I had one of these: http://www.club-nintendo.ch/boutique-2007/images/u-force.jpg

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Vickor]

I'd recommend trying it before you bash it. I've tried it on several occasions in the past (and now own it) and it's accuracy/lag do not feel significantly worse than the wii. I've seen zero problems with lighting, clothing, etc. The voice recognition is actually quite excellent and it even works reasonably well while a video is playing.

The required distance from the device is annoying though. The menu system as well, but thats a software problem and can be fixed. Check out the dance game for a great example of an intuitive menu.

Even if it fails as a gaming device (which I doubt), I still see the ability to control your entertainment system without a remote as being common place in the future. For example, I was watching a movie on my xbox while I was reading slashdot. When I wanted to concentrate on replying to a post, I just said "xbox pause" without my fingers every leaving my computer. In fact, I hope the kinect is a finanicial success, because that will inspire competitors to emulate and improve the experience, which means even more awesome stuff for consumers.

xbox play...

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[bloodhawk]

And just about everything in your list is massively exaggerated. My young sister and brother are both happily playing right now and none of the problems you listed appear to exist with maybe the exception of some of the voice commands can be iffy

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Cylix]

My only complaint as a non-kinect user is the update introduces significant lag in the menu system.

It's not horrible, but it's not nearly as smooth as it was.

There was no gain for non-kinect users as well... unless you like the windows 3.1 menu look and feel.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Xest]

Yeah the guy is a troll, look at his post history. He made a similarly stupid post last time Kinect was discussed. Criticism of Kinect is fair enough but some of the points he made don't even make sense- complaints about lighting etc. when it works using IR. Still he gets modded up because he's slagging off Microsoft and that gives your average Slashdotter a hardon no matter how factually incorrect it is.

That's not to say all his points are invalid, the distance thing is a bit of a pain certainly (although the Wii and Move struggle at very short distances too) but for the most part he's just trolling.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Xest]

I've not seen any issues with lag in the menu system or anything like that, but I agree the new design is horrible, but then, I never liked it since the original 360 dashboard personally.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[rtb61]

Neither did they advertise and sell it on a mass scale to rip off mug punters.

We can assume the first kinect prototypes were far worse but it still does not excuse releasing a buggy V*.* product to the public because they felt with sufficient advertising and blame it on the consumers clumsy use they would be able to generate a profit and take some steam out of the Wii and the Playstation, sort of a parallel advertising superiority of technology thing, even when most customers will not buy Kinect.

Reason for M$ to release it now even when it is not fully functional, hmm, keep the investors happy with the Google notebook release just on the horizon especially after the success of Android.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[(startx)]

Seriously! They finally got it right with the last UI update, and then they went and screwed it up again. Change for the sake of Change is not good. There must be a purpose!

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[SuricouRaven]

Traditionally, this title goes to the Nintendo Power Glove. It's just one of those titles everyone knows: The worst ever game is ET for the 2600, and the worst ever accessory is the Power Glove.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[robthebloke]

I love the powerglove, it's so bad!

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[DrXym]

Sure, it gets mixed up when you do things like cross your arms or hide them behind your back, but it isn't THAT much of an issue.

Games have been designed to work around that issue. Often by requiring you to perform some wildly exaggerated movement in order to make it as unambiguous as possible.

The fundamental problem is that it is mindbuggeringly hard for computers to infer stuff from analogue inputs. Even state of the art biometric systems can't claim 100% accuracy and I expect the threshold of Kinect in optimal conditions would be way less than that.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[index0]

Is this you in this picture? http://i.imgur.com/LL3Nf.png

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, lighting can be an actual problem, even with IR. Not all light is in the visible spectrum; some sources can emit and/or reflect IR light (someone else commented that glasses were causing a problem). And it wouldn't be limited to the Kinect; I recall there being some issues with the Wiimotes in certain lighting conditions.

In fact, you can probably test it somewhat; the Wii's setup allows you to calibrate the wiimotes, and you can actually see in realtime what the 'camera' of the wiimote sees. Normally, it's the sensor bar, but you should be able to check for multiple sources of IR lights in theory.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[ToasterMonkey]

And the Wright brothers couldn't fly around the world in their first plane either.

Did anyone at the time ever think they would? Dream it, maaaaybe?

THAT is the problem with new technology nowadays, it is oversold, and overhyped.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[ToasterMonkey]

The required distance from the device is annoying though. The menu system as well, but thats a software problem and can be fixed. Check out the dance game for a great example of an intuitive menu.

This generation of motion based gaming obviously has lots of rough edges in _all_ corners. I hate moving a coffee table for EyePet, but kids love it. The Wii, as gimmicky as most "gamers" think the controls are still has Nintendo's age old secret sauce which is high quality first party games that nail their target demographic. The other consoles continually deal with an identity crisis.

Now,

"but thats a software problem and can be fixed"

This excuse DOES NOT CUT IT ANYMORE. This kind of thinking leads to Tea Party movements.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[MikeBabcock]

It uses IR for depth sensing, that means it will have the same problems in well-sunlit environments that the Wii does; don't let direct sunlight fall on the sensors.

Re:Worst Console Add-on Ever

[ToasterMonkey]

but for the most part he's just trolling.

WTF is mostly trolling?

Maybe you just disagree with most of what he said and slandered some random account on the Internet's character?

Open source driver news..

[LingNoi]

I can't believe the summary didn't mention the $2000 bounty reward for making an open source driver.

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2010/11/04/the-open-kinect-project-the-ok-prize-get-1000-bounty-for-kinect-for-xbox-360-open-source-drivers/

Re:Open source driver news..

[kiddygrinder]

$2000 dollars is not enough by a long shot. someone might do it for free though.

Re:Open source driver news..

[Anonymous Coward]

$2000 dollars is not enough by a long shot. someone might do it for free though.

If I had the skills and time and will to do it for free I would. Then I would collect the $2000 bounty as a reward.

Re:Open source driver news..

[sznupi]

Will be rather hard, considering the processing happens on the CPU of X360, apparently. It might be still good (and easy enough), for the price(?), as a "head" for some small robot with stereoscopic cameras and IR illumination, for dark areas, I guess...

Re:Open source driver news..

[tjhart85]

That's really the point.

It's not really meant to force people to work on it, it's for the people that would already be working on it to get rewarded for their efforts.

Along with the 2k, comes quite a bit of geek cred. Yeah, you'd get the cred either way, but why not get the money too.

Re:Open source driver news..

[ToasterMonkey]

$2000 dollars is not enough by a long shot. someone might do it for free though.

If I had the skills and time and will to do it for free I would. Then I would collect the $2000 bounty as a reward.

What kind of fucked up world do you guys live in?

Re:Open source driver news..

[citizenr]

Will be rather hard, considering the processing happens on the CPU of X360

no it doesnt, unit streams "camera" data with color values representing depth

Re:Open source driver news..

[sznupi]

All the interesting processing.

Re:Open source driver news..

[citizenr]

All the interesting processing.

you mean all the slow skeletal reconstruction lagging 0.5 seconds behind video feed

Re:Open source driver news..

[sznupi]

Yup. Interesting. More than basic depth estimation (better one in this case, sure - but optimized for human figure standing at particular distance, and apparently energy-hungry)

Pictures of unsold Kinect boxes at the launch

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/xbox-360/news/kinects-new-york-launch-misses-expectations-but-still-a-good-party/a-20101104112747310011/g-20060321132945404017

Hard to imagine how bad Kinect has to be for hardcore Xbox fans to not even buy it. These are the same guys who have bought 3,4, or 5 versions of the worst console hardware in history with the RRoD plagued Xbox 360 and the shitty HD-DVD format.

Re:Pictures of unsold Kinect boxes at the launch

[SoVi3t]

Oh boy, a store in NYC over purchased Kinects. And the holiday season is STILL going on. Wow, newsworthy. I also remember completely empty lineups at stores during the PS3 launch, and that sure doomed that system, right???? RIGHT??? Seriously, I work at another major electronics store, and we sold out, and were getting calls from virtually everybody telling us that Toys R Us or Future Shop or various other stores, were sold out. The ONLY thing worth complaining about is a some what lackluster launch featuring too many similar titles (exercise games, sports/minigame compilations, and dance simulators). And most consoles have had shitty launches during the last few gens.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[timeOday]

And yet the wii does work... without question...

Well, it does "something" reliably (which might well beat a more ambitious but failed attempt). But compare Dance Dance Revolution style games on the two; with Kinect, you dance and it watches you dance and scores you; on the wii, you just tilt your hand in time with the music. Big difference.

Joystiq - Kinect Is Absurdly Broken

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.joystiq.com/2010/11/04/kinect-vs-our-living-rooms-a-survey/?

"For all the talk of revolutionizing the Xbox 360 experience and making gaming more natural/ accessible, it's bordering on absurd how broken Kinect is when it comes to something as simple as working in your home."

Jeez, that's brutal.

Re:Joystiq - Kinect Is Absurdly Broken

[TheLink]

Wow, sweet spot is 7 feet? I somehow doubt it's going to do well in the Japanese market ;).

Re:Joystiq - Kinect Is Absurdly Broken

[DrXym]

Wow, sweet spot is 7 feet? I somehow doubt it's going to do well in the Japanese market ;).

Or people who don't live in cavernous clutter free environments. i.e. people in bedsits, dorms, bedrooms, apartments, highrise flats, terraced houses, semis or basically anywhere where you'd be lucky to have 2 metes of space between the TV and a couch. Even those people who do have space will likely have a coffee table or something in the way.

Re:Joystiq - Kinect Is Absurdly Broken

[boriquajake]

My internet fu is weak, but I searched all over the linked to article and I couldn't find the word "broken" anywhere. What am I missing?

Ask iFixit anything

[kwiens]

I started iFixit, and I wrote today's teardown. I'm also a long-time /. member.

I totally dig the anti-Microsoft sentiment. But just like with the iPad, we've got real innovation here that came out of a closed environment. Microsoft's got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in visual motion recognition and speech recognition technology. The best reaction all of us in the open source community can have is to use this innovation as a call to action, and as building a block to write open tools. Adafruit's contest is a fantastic start, and I'll be supporting that any way I can.

Got any questions about the hardware that I didn't address in the teardown? Fire away.

Kyle Wiens

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

But just like with the iPad, we've got real innovation here that came out of a closed environment.

I don't see any innovation here. Kinect and iPad are both just evolutionary steps. None of the concepts of these devices are in any form new. To have companies with infinite resources make products out of ideas and concepts that have been researched and prototyped for decades by public institutions as well as the private sector is not innovation.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Any idea what Microsoft's parts/manufacturing costs would be for the kinect?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

How much are Microsoft paying you?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[jdogalt]

mod parent up. ipod was not innovation, but a company with vast resources waiting for the right time to walk into a market and ensure that the actual innovators did not end up with the lions share of the market. Same thing with the ipad. I know the silicon valley attitude from much firsthand personal experience. The attitude is not to innovate, or place a high value on groundbreaking ideas, but instead to understand that to cash in, you wait to leverage other advantages when the time is best to cash in on someone elses innovation. This is precisely the attitude of Jobs-2.0 as opposed to the attitude of Jobs-1.0 who got sorely bested commercially until he adopted the Gates strategy.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bizarre attitude. Who is sitting around with the fantastic ideas waiting for the right time to walk into a market and screw the actual innovators? Who could actually do that without worrying they were going to have their lunch cut by the actual innovators walking into that market a few minutes earlier with perhaps some new innovations you never even heard of what with being a total parasite and all? Seriously you believe that is whats happening?
Or are the vast resources of those you implicitly deride actually working towards and producing the innovations you speak of and, god forbid, profiting from the investment?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

No question about the hardware, feel free to ignore.

The best reaction all of us in the open source community can have is to use this innovation as a call to action, and as building a block to write open tools.

In my opinion, no it's not. That would mean to support a company that gives itself the right to monitor you and your communications, record them and share them with anybody they feel like. Don't let them catch you smoking weed or doing anything you wouldn't want other people to see when you use the Kinect. They granted themselves the right to record you in their updated terms of use.

That's like buying a slightly better car that unfortunately runs on ground babies ... and was made by BP.

From a less emotional point of view, the whole "open tools" aspect is rather moot. Look at the open Wii remote tools. They are rudimentary, occasionally working hacks that never found any real use. Sure there were a few fancy demos, but those were never heard from again. Not to mention that said companies would sick their lawyers on any remotely successful use they don't approve of.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a question Mr iFixit; What the flying fuck is a "tear down", is it what is commonly and more correctly called a "review"?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[RobertLTux]

the difference between a tear down and a review is a tear down normally involves getting out tools and dissembling the product while a review is just talking about the product.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

My bad, I originally commented without reading the fine article. I agree that "disassembly notes" are not a "review".

a tear down normally involves getting out tools and dissembling the product while a review is just talking about the product.

That's not true. A "field test" talks about using a product, a review of a repairable item (from motorbikes to pro audio) will take a detailed look at the guts. Consumer electronics are not intended to be repairable, therefore reviewers do not waste their time covering internals for the benefit of the single reader with access to a SMD rework station.

I still do not understand the term "tear down". Things to "tear down" include female undergarments, buildings and papers. What is being torn in a careful disassembly and what does downwards motion have to do with it?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[tequesta]

I don't see any innovation here. Kinect and iPad are both just evolutionary steps. None of the concepts of these devices are in any form new.

What?

I won't dwell on the iPad, that's not the point here. But where in the world have you been able to buy a 3D camera with skeletal pose estimation that works reliably enough to play video games with it, let alone for this price? The Kinect doesn't have new technology... for cutting-edge researchers working in motion capturing, robotics and the automotive industry. For the mass market, its technology is entirely new and absolutely revolutionary.

Heck, just the TOF infrared camera in that resolution alone is something that would have cost you a sweet 10,000$ before Monday this week.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[sznupi]

It's not TOF (for a long it seemed like it might be, but it isn't; emitted IR is there for illumination)

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

"I totally dig the anti-Microsoft sentiment. But just like with the iPad, we've got real innovation here that came out of a closed environment."

Slashdot stories about Microsoft really do often suffer a massive amount of hate, but for Kinect it's a spectacular level of ACs doing it, and people like Ringbus whose accounts are fairly new, but gets modded up in every post he makes yet only slags off Sony's competitors and praises Sony for the most part.

I suspect, most of the Kinect "hate" really is just outright shilling. It stinks of a sustained FUD campaign because much of it repeats things that just aren't true in an attempt to embed falsehoods in public mindset.

I think there's a will to see it fail as badly as Move has, which it may or may not, but it's unlikely it can do any worse at least- even Nintendo are struggling somewhat with their offering now and it begs the question whether people are bored of motion control in general already.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[tequesta]

Nonsense. Microsoft bought 3DV in 2008, who had demonstrated the ZCam at CES that year. The ZCam is indeed true IR-based TOF 3D, as demonstrated in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDKaMvAFzA and many other videos. The Kinect is the direct descendant of the ZCam.

Look at the iFixit teardown. The Kinect has an IR projector, a TOF 3D camera and a color webcam.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[tequesta]

I have to correct myself.

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7nRKU0nFxA shows it uses pattern-based triangulation. No time-of-flight involved.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[sznupi]

I was a bit burned by this too; cheap TOF would be great for so many things (robotics for example) - but it isn't. There is no particularly special hardware to be found in the Kinect, it does its stuff by software running on X360 CPU (maybe some software is why ZCam were bought, or maybe to...eliminate competitor? MS wasn't ever above such tricks)

And how would you recognize TIF camera on a teardown anyway? (nvm how it would have 2 of them for some reason, curiously arranged in a classic stereoscopic way)

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[xtracto]

Ow man... you should go to Reddit instead.

It is really boring to see how in slashdot the only comments and snarky questions you will see will be to criticize the technology.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[MikeBabcock]

Considering Sony was playing with the exact company and technology Microsoft is working with now, but back in the PS2 era (with the Eyetoy), this is hardly huge innovation.

Using dual cameras for 3D perception? Not new. Using IR sensors instead of visible light? See Wii. Using cameras to track body position and movement? See Eyetoy, and then Eye.

Sure the hardware's "neat" but its not innovative, and its certainly not mind blowing.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[MikeBabcock]

A tear down is a taking apart of an object.

You work out the component pieces which is usually not revealed by the manufacturer.

Its also a well-used term.

Google "hardware tear down" for examples.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[ToasterMonkey]

This dictionary says:

"innovate"
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_us1258229

I say both devices ARE examples of innovation, and I challenge you to a duel, sir.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[kwiens]

Every device manufacturer tears down their competitors products to find out how they're made. Our engineers do the same thing, but release our findings for the benefit of the world. Teardown is a standard industry term. I didn't come up with it, and I don't know why we chop trees up and tear products down. I can say that the things we take apart are generally flatter when we're done!

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[kwiens]

No, we don't publish bill of materials estimates. It is hard to believe that Microsoft is making much money off this device once you factor in the tremendous amount of R&D on top of the complexity of the physical design of Kinect. As usual for game consoles, the real money is in the games.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[kwiens]

Nothing. I had to buy the Kinect at retail, just like we do with every device we take apart.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[citizenr]

Microsoft's got hundreds of millions of dollars invested in visual motion recognition and speech recognition technology.

and yet they go out and use third party solution :) Its almost as hundreds of millions of dollars were wasted while small startup delivered what they wanted.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you guys promote a driver bounty to replace GlovePIE? I'd rather use my Wiimote without the software calling home and no geopolitical restrictions from the crazy programmer's EULA, and also so that it'd be truly open.

Signed, an Egyptian who imported a Wii at launch and who would like a truly open driver set to handle Kinect, Wii Remotes and the PS Move.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I say both devices ARE examples of innovation

How?

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not TOF.
The hardware isn't new and the concept of "You are the controller" has been done before as well. It's just another implementation of the idea. Hence calling Kinect an "evolutionary step". Nothing wrong with that but of course certainly doesn't have the ring to it like calling it "innovation" marketing-wise.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like to see this technology or something like it used on smartphones to watch my fingers type with no keys on any flat surface. Then I wouldn't need to try to type on the silly little keyboards.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[fyrewulff]

I'd throw in a bunch of money to support that AC. Unfortunately, it seems people that are usually "i hate region restrictions!" and "open source everything!" all just live with GlovePIE for some silly reason.

Re:Ask iFixit anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a totally closed environment? Microsoft Research produces how much publicly available content and publications? I'm not sure, but I know it is a lot. (not sure of the exact numbers) Goiing into production is definately closed, but there is public research papers and such at some point that comes out of MSR.

People seem to forget the two sides to Microsoft. One pushes and sells Office, and server products. Licenses and makes tons of money off of those products. The other, while not all agree or like, is a very open and supports the Research and PhD system. So be mad at the Office or Win7 marketing system, but separate that from research and innovation in this case.

This is great that some on this site are realizing this is true innovation. Also, look at MS Second Light. Another research project from a few years ago. These are projects funded and innovated by Microsoft. I really don't see how people could say this was research or innovation done by others in other labs or companies. Come on, this isn't SQL Server being reinvented from the old sybase deal or someone else's idea. This isn't a iPod, iPhone idea reworked from the great work apple has done. this is just plain cool. And Sony's response? I'm stunned.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[santax]

I am sure that ratings like troll for my criticism and these kind of comments will magically go away in half a year. When MS stoppes doing the Israel trick and paying peeps to provide good publicity ;) The kinect is a failure. I tested it. It is as sucky as a wii but less fun. And anyone who didn't get payed to test the kinect will tell you the same. But, curious as I am, how long did you have your Kinect? Well?

What The Hell Was Microsoft Thinking?

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be one thing if Kinect was just some extra for the Xbox 360 but Microsoft has closed down almost all of their first party studios, piss off Bungie and let them leave, let other traditional Xbox focused PC developers go multi-platform. The release list for 2011 and beyond for the 360 is almost barren.

It is mind boggling that they actually thought they were going to be able to abandon their current Xbox userbase and magically turn the Xbox 360 into a Wii type success. Or even something remotely close to the Wii in sales.

I can't imagine what it must feel like to own an Xbox 360 and see Microsoft blowing 500 million trying to attract soccer moms. It's like some guy using his old girlfriend's car to take a new girl he met on a date.

Re:What The Hell Was Microsoft Thinking?

[RightSaidFred99]

I love when people think they're Executive Fudders releasing FUD that will shape teh Interwebz.

Nobody's paying attention to you, dude, and you're not the Master Manipulator, Glorious FUD Ninja - I promise.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mean to make fun of you for speaking a foreign language, but this wasn't just some grammar error. It's hard to tell whether you just didn't understand the comment about hundreds of millions of dollars or are just retarded.

Nope, Unsold Kinects At The Damn Launch Event

[Anonymous Coward]

500 million in advertising and PR. Practically bribing people to show up at the Kinect launch event and they only managed to sell 2/3rds of their units.

Epic Fail Microsoft.

Re:Nope, Unsold Kinects At The Damn Launch Event

[Theoboley]

2/3 of 500 million is still appx 330 million sold... 330 Million * 150.00 = 4.95 Billion dollars...

I dunno about you, but i'd say that's a decent amount of change, nor would i call it a failure by any means...

Re:Nope, Unsold Kinects At The Damn Launch Event

[Theoboley]

my mistake... i read this as 500 million units... nvm...

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[santax]

Bullshit, you would have logged on your account for that ;) Now your just another meaningless AC with an excuse afterwards. You have an account. Use it. Like men use their balls and not the balls from "mister X"

Kinects In Stores Everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

Stores everywhere have them. People have been seeing them everywhere today.

Microsoft has been undershipping the individual Kinect units to try to force people to buy the in stock Xbox 360+Kinect bundles and allow the PR people to shout the inevitable 'sold old!' BS.

This isn't like the Wii where you couldn't find one for a year.

Re:Kinects In Stores Everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a genuine production problem for the wii; whereas Microsoft has kinect supply chain figured out. Still, ubisoft is predicting shortages this season - http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=118957&page=1

Re:Kinects In Stores Everywhere

[Anonymous Coward]

of course they do, there are litterally hundreds of thousands of pre orders and believe it or not, not everyone picks it up the day its released. Current estimates have been upped from 3 million to 5 million sold by end of year.

Re:Kinects In Stores Everywhere

[reddwar]

The older I get the more I realize I could just drive to the store after work the next day to pick up my pre-orders instead of waiting in line and freezing my butt off for the midnight releases. Not like I'm going to be playing my game when I have to go home and get up for work the next morning.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

If you say "as sucky as a Wii" you're already putting yourself into a category of people whose opinions do not reflect any sort of consensus.

I guarantee the criticism won't go away until you stop randomly bringing up international politics in random discussions, making irrelevant comparisons, calling clear and verifiable statements of fact "a lie", and tossing around opinions you know are widely disagreed with (that the Wii sucks) as if they proved your point. I'm sure you're better at my language than I am at yours (unless maybe it's French, and then only maybe), but your stuff is difficult to understand.

MS Had To Cap Pre-Orders Due To Demand

[SoVi3t]

http://www.industrygamers.com/news/microsoft-had-to-cap-kinect-pre-orders-because-demand-too-great/

Re:MS Had To Cap Pre-Orders Due To Demand

[ledow]

Not a single mention of the number of pre-orders, so it's a worthless piece of information ("Both units pre-ordered" becomes "ALL OUR PREORDERS SOLD OUT AND STILL PEOPLE ASK FOR MORE!").

Also, there hasn't been a product in the video games industry in the last 20 years that didn't "sell out" at launch. It's completely arbitrary. It all depends on how many you produce and/or how many you decide to "let" people pre-order, nothing else. They estimate they'll sell 3 million - is that good or bad? I have no idea. The Wii has sold 75 million. Is that comparable? If just one in 20 Wii owners has a WiiMotionPlus or a WiiFit that makes the 3 million *estimated* sales worthless. To quote the wiki "As of May 2010, {Wii Sports Resort} has sold 16.14 million copies" and they come with a WiiMotionPlus, so that's the estimated sales blown out of the water almost 5-fold. Is that relevant?

Pre-orders mean precisely NOTHING. Thousands of pre-order still exist for Duke Nukem Forever - doesn't mean they've sold any or that the product even exists. And "selling out of pre-orders" means that the arbitrary number that MS decided was reserved for pre-orders has been met with the same number of potential buyers. That's it.

Don't tell me pre-orders, and if you do state FIGURES - tell me confirmed sales. The stock they sell to the big stores MONTHS before official product release is the only number that means anything, and even that doesn't predict whether shops will ever order any more.

Re:MS Had To Cap Pre-Orders Due To Demand

[geekoid]

Capping pre-orders has become a marketing ploy. It used to mean that sales beat there best real estimates. Not any more.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[daath93]

I'll say it. Perhaps taking a go in your native language would be more useful, because you your English is fucktard bad. I still can't seem to grab whatever it was you were trying to say in your reply, except that somehow you are pissed off and trolling against Microsoft because they are Microsoft. You most likely hump goats. Thank you.

Poor engineers

[GF678]

I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.

Not that I'm defending the product or Microsoft. Theory is nice but if the physical product sucks then it sucks, but it's kinda obvious why companies are afraid to try something different.

Re:Poor engineers

[Sylak]

I agree. The sad part is that many 360 owners will not even give this a once-over glance, much less consider buying it on a serious level. I would want to get one to see what my computer can do with it honestly (assuming that either it uses generic webcam/microphone drivers or that people will write them soon enough like the 360 wired controllers)

Re:Poor engineers

[Kenja]

Trying something different is OK, succeeding would have been better.

Re:Poor engineers

[Cylix]

You don't have to defend or defame the product until you have tried it.

I'm waiting for a billion reviews to see if it's something worth acquiring. My main problem with the kinect is the use videos are all microsoft released and they have a lousy track record for being honest about their products. Point in case was the virtual friend for xbox 360/kinect demo. Completely scripted and a total wash, but it was later defended as a "what if" video and not a technology demo.

While they never solicited public feedback on the unit before shipping I do hope they did some earnest research. Then again you can of course make a good deal of money in this country if you rely solely on advertising.

In the end we just have to wait for user reviews from our peers or take the plunge ourselves if you feel like being a risk taker. However, what I will not do is praise a product on it's technological merits alone. That might get it some street cred or geek respect, but I'm not going to give someone money because they tried really hard. It has to have value for me (and a lot of other people) to be successful.

Re:Poor engineers

[NixieBunny]

Think of this product as something similar to the DARPA autonomous-vehicle race series: the first one was a total failure, and the second one produced spectacular results.

They can continuously improve the firmware to make it quite a usable product. This stuff takes many iterations, and the more units out there, the more feedback you get.

Re:Poor engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.

Not that I'm defending the product or Microsoft. Theory is nice but if the physical product sucks then it sucks, but it's kinda obvious why companies are afraid to try something different.

Microsoft Engineers are used to this by now... sadly

Re:Poor engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

MS aren't really marketing Kinect to their existing audience, as they have a pretty good foothold there. Instead, MS is aiming at a whole new market. I'm sure that MS will put some resources into integrating the device into regular games, but at this stage MS is trying for some horizontal love.

Re:Poor engineers

[Dystopian Rebel]

I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.

I know what you mean -- senior management makes me miserable too.

Re:Poor engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Just go to Best Buy or any of the other retail stores that have live demos. You'll either end up loving it, or you'll think it is an expensive toy that is not worth your money. I've tried it, and decided to buy it afterwards. The Move and the Wii do not compare to it at all. --signing AC only because I'm too lazy to create an account.

Re:Poor engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

I have see plenty of very positive *user* feedback over twitter/blogs, from people actually using it @home. I probably will setup mine tonight, will see how it is going.

For Microsoft, receiving hateful feedback no matter how good the product is not very surprise, guess they already used to it. LOL

Re:Poor engineers

[jgtg32a]

Why, just blame all the problems on the software

Re:Poor engineers

[geminidomino]

Instead, MS is aiming at a whole new market.

I've been wondering... How big could the market of "already has a Wii but is willing to drop $450 on a new, unproven system" actually be among soccer moms and grannies?

Re:Poor engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hate to have been an engineer working on this thing. Putting all your heart and soul into the R&D trying to make something novel, interesting and cutting-edge, and all you get in response is hate.

Rest assured, this isn't something exactly new for those working at MSFT.

On the other hand, the hate is mostly confined to basement-dweller clubs such as Slashdot, and we get along with normal people just fine, so who cares?

Re:Poor engineers

[ToasterMonkey]

They can continuously improve the firmware to make it quite a usable product.

Fuck you and the rest of the software industry for thinking this way.

Re:Poor engineers

[ToasterMonkey]

I'll add..

This isn't research, this is past that and is now a product in hand of consumers. What I said before stands.

Re:Poor engineers

[ToasterMonkey]

Now you have to wonder, "did he do this on purpose to waste my mod points?"

Re:Poor engineers

[BigSes]

They got their paychecks, did they not?

Re:Poor engineers

[zurmikopa]

Drifting a bit away from the Kinect, but as someone who participated in all 3 grand challenges, while there was certainly significant technology progress between the first and second race, it's also true that the course for the second grand challenge was vastly easier.

Re:Poor engineers

[smcn]

GiantBomb did an all-day live stream with Kinect on Thursday in which they demoed every launch title. You can see the archived versions here, on the Quick Looks tab.

Re:Poor engineers

[RightSaidFred99]

Nobody's wondering that because your point is silly. Almost any product has room for improvement upon initial release. If it's too bad nobody will buy the first version and a second version won't be released in most cases. If it's "good enough", improvements will be driven by customers and the second version will be better.

I know - it's just _amazing_ that you can't get feedback from a million people who have used your product _before_ you actually release it! What shoddy pre-release testing, they should have given 1 million people a version to test before releasing, amirite?

Don't blame PrimeSense

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously, for obvious reasons.

I have a friend who works at PrimeSense. I asked him, a while back, how good Kinect is going to be. He said that Microsoft bought their hardware, but insisted on writing their own software drivers. I asked him whether, when the product sucks, he's not worried that people will think that's all PrimeSense is up to, and he claimed their clients know that fact.

Reading your comment, I'm not sure that was a good idea, after all....

LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fanboy. When people are seeing Kinects sitting in stores unsold on launch day and easily bought online you just look ridiculous and pathetic trying to imply there is some amazing demand for this piece of junk add-on.

Re:LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this modded troll if it's a justified point?

Seems writing anything as Anonymous Coward brings the hate. *ducks along with his parent poster*

3d webcam

[Khyber]

If Microsoft whips out the ability to use this as a 3D webcam with my PC, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Screw the 360, I want this for my computer.

Re:3d webcam

[IrquiM]

Time place your bet as to when the webcam 3d driver appears in the Linux kernel!

Re:3d webcam

[jgtg32a]

When it was announced they did say there was going to be PC support as well, and IIRC it is listed as a feature of Win8 I have no idea about Win7 though

All major sites are saying...

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont own a Xbox.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

"I speak it perfect" is grammaticality incorrect. For someone who speaks English perfectly, that error should not have happened, whether it was written or spoken!

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[flimflammer]

Your original post makes no sense at all, bro. I can barely discern the meaning of 90% of it.

I would feel cheated if i bought this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Me and a few game-addicted friends observed how several people tried to use Kinect at Gamescon. They had 6 or 7 cubicles with different games for people to test.

We were baffled about how terribly bad this Kinect is .... the lag was several seconds ... the moves barely ever recognised ... you saw the people getting frustated after a minute of (non-)play.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[wmac]

English is not the only fucking language on the earth.

Every Major Gaming Site Reports Those Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

But hey! Some random fanboy on the Net say Kinect doesn't have all those problems!

Who do we believe?

Re:Every Major Gaming Site Reports Those Problems

[Anonymous Coward]

yep tough decision, people that are actually using it, or some of the more biased sites that have ps3 or wii affliations.

Re:Every Major Gaming Site Reports Those Problems

[cjnichol]

You should believe ALL of them. Everyone is giving you their own personal, and probably biased, opinion.

My first, and only, experience with the Kinect was in a Kinect store in Toronto (an entire store dedicated to this thing!). I have to say the whole process was pretty much hassle free. I just stood there while it registered my body (pretty much the equivalent of registering a controller on the ps3/wii/xbox) which took a few seconds. I did notice that you had to be standing a fair distance from the setup meaning this will more likely have to go in a family room as opposed to someones bedroom.

I didn't notice any lag really while playing the game (I played a racing game) which was pretty fun. I didn't try out any of the voice commands (didn't even know it coud do that) so I can't comment. One of the employees was managing the menus so I can't comment on that either.

One thing that I did notice was that the employee seemed extremely relaxed while playing and had excellent control whereas I was a lot more rigid in my movements and had a bit more difficulty. The human mind is an amazing feedback controller and should be able to adapt to most things you throw at it (input lag and whatnot). I liken the experience to the first time I played the wii.

Will this be useful for high-end competitive gaming? I highly doubt it. Will this be amazingly fun to have in the home? Hell yes.

A Ripoff Of Old Sony Eye Toy Tech

[Anonymous Coward]

There were no Microsoft engineers involved.

The Kinect tech is a copy of old Sony PS2 era Eye Toy technology. It was created by a company that Nintendo and Sony passed on and then ended up licensing to Microsoft.

Microsoft then proceeded to hype it to absurd levels and now the reality of how much it sucks is setting in.

So give the 'hate' BS a rest. Microsoft has no one to blame but themselves for playing the hype card with tech that wasn't up to the hype. No one held a gun to the clowns running the Xbox fiasco to fake those E3 demos.

Re:A Ripoff Of Old Sony Eye Toy Tech

[am 2k]

Uhm, no. The Kinect has a 3D depth camera built-in, while the EyeToy is only using a 2D image with background elimination. That's a huge difference.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[daath93]

Really? Maybe that would be why I told him to use his default. In case you hadn't noticed, he was bragging about his depth of knowledge in languages a few posts ago, or can't we trouble you to keep up with the fucking thread?

1Up,Kotaku,CNet Trashing This Turd Of An Addon

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, those bastions of Sony fanboyism 1Up,Kotaku,CNet trashed Kinect when they knew it was actually an amazing and revolutionary motion control system and totally isn't an over hyped crappy ripoff of old Sony PS2 era Eye Toy tech...

LOL!

You don't fake E3 demos and then keep your 'revolutionary' product out of the hands of the press like Microsoft was forced to with Kinect because it is so good...

Re:1Up,Kotaku,CNet Trashing This Turd Of An Addon

[Nuskrad]

Have you actually read the Kotaku or Cnet reviews? Cnet calls it 'the most fun you can have with your hands free'. Kotaku, while acknowledging there are a number of flaws, says that it 'can be revolutionary'. I wouldn't exactly say either of these reviews are 'trashing' the Kinect.

Re:1Up,Kotaku,CNet Trashing This Turd Of An Addon

[delinear]

We won't know anything until they shift more units and games start appearing. To me it seems like a stupid idea (and I am a 360 owner, and had the original XBOX before that), but I understand it's trying to sell to a market that I'm simply not interested in. The proof will be whether they manage to capture much, if any, of that market. Again, my instinct is no (the reason Wii is so successful in the casual gamer market is not just because of what it does, but how much it costs - £180 for a console and £150 for a camera is a lot for a casual gamer to drop to see if they like a system), but I stand to be corrected if this does take off.

Re:1Up,Kotaku,CNet Trashing This Turd Of An Addon

[sznupi]

The first quite can be (per wording from second...) a diplomatic way of not mentioning how much worse it is from 'hands on'...

Re:1Up,Kotaku,CNet Trashing This Turd Of An Addon

[geekoid]

The review industry is notoriously unreliable due t there 'overly optimistic' reviews of everything.

It may suck as a game controller, but...

[joh]

...this is actually opening up some interesting potential. This thing is a tool to recognize and track persons and their movements in a room, no more and no less. Have some of such things in your home, one in each room, connected to a small server. Improve the voice recognition and speech synthesis, add some software and you've got something very close to a home that is watching you, your family and your guests, knows where you are, what you're doing, what you're saying and can speak to you. Give the software access to all your personal communication and data (email, phone, voicebox, scheduling, ...) and your house starts to become aware of you and your life. Could be very interesting (and also very spooky).

Open Source drivers for these things would open up a world of interesting things to do with it, no doubt.

Re:It may suck as a game controller, but...

[middenview]

It was the spooky aspects that got me first. Apart from mobile 'phones, what better way to hide a sophisticated eavesdropping device in plain sight.

Re:It may suck as a game controller, but...

[Merls the Sneaky]

Disconnected from the power it becomes a very useless eavesdropping device.

Apart from mobile phones though I would thing any webcam would be better. Many households already have them (pretty much all lalptops/netbooks/notebooks/ipads) and provided you have access to the system you can record any and all conversation and video and have it delivered to a web location of your choosing.

Re:It may suck as a game controller, but...

[SoVi3t]

I keep telling people it's only a matter of time until you walk into a grocery store or walmart, and talk to a kinect style device, allowing you to ask where certain objects are, how much they are, what sales are coming up, etc. Then you could get directions in the store, and displays throughout the store could remind you as you walk by that you're near the object you initially searched for.

The Kinect lags to much

[miffo.swe]

Tried one yesterday and i was very disappointed. My Eye-Toy, the Sony product Microsoft copied and extended is eight years old and still more responsive. The lag was very annoying and made games like boxing unbearable since you punch and your boxer punches long after on the screen.

Since i have used Eye-Toy extensively i was expecting that the Kinect would be much better but it was actually worse in some respects. The tech behind kinect/Eye-Toy has been used extensively in arcades etc so its actually pretty surprising Microsoft couldnt get it right. Perhaps they had to work themselves around some patents of variants that actually work and in the process ended up with an inferior product.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[91degrees]

eyetoy is not really a fair comparison. All that's doing is detecting changes in an image within an area. It's a much much simpler task.

Now, if Kinect sucks then it sucks, and that's a shame, especially since there are ways of dealing with this, but the solution is different from eyetoy.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[Anonymous Coward]

You took the most base concepts from two technologies and tried to make them sound like they're one and the same and that's the shame of it all. It's almost like trying to compare To Kill A Mockingingbird with Hard To Kill because both films have the word Kill in their title.

Did you try to compare Ectosketch with the iPad because both have the same form factor?

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[ToasterMonkey]

eyetoy is much simpler than kinect so kinect's lag gets a pass?

uh...

We can't keep giving new technology free passes simply because it's more complex. This is just a toy, so whatever, not a huge deal.
I just hate the trend of ignoring how new tech sucks more than old tech because... it's new, and sucks faster.

We're in a vacuum where "it's OK, in ten years the new tech will finally be better in every meaningful way than the refined old tech it replaced."
Yes, it's often true, if nothing else changed and ten years passed. However, time moves on, we make the same choices and we're in a perpetual usability/convenience hole.

I know, refined _new_ tech is expensive. Maybe if there were more competition it wouldn't be as much.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[91degrees]

eyetoy is much simpler than kinect so kinect's lag gets a pass?

No. Where did I say that?

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[Anonymous Coward]

eyetoy is not really a fair comparison.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[91degrees]

Well, it's not. It doesn't mean Kinect gets a pass. It just means it's not a fair comparison.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[FreekyGeek]

I'm sorry, but this is nothing but a troll. I've been reading all these comments and mentally laughing at all the people who are throwing hate and yet have never even used it - they were just speculating on what *might* be bad. But this person... this person is simply outright LYING. Bad speculation based on something you haven't even used, well - it';s annoying but this is Slashdot so it's expected. But i can't sit still for the above from someone who *allegedly* "tried one yesterday". Let me give you some real, true, unbiased information from someone who owns one. To be sure, I've only had it a for a few days, but I can give you my impressions.

I, too, have/had an EyeToy. I had several games for it and used them quite a bit. When it decided to work, it did vaguely alright for the very simplest games that only needed to recognize things like "jump" or "lean sideways". Anything other than that, and the responses were dismally horrible, causing intense frustration. Overall, you know what? The EyeToy sucked ass. Its only selling point was that there was nothing else like it. It was SO super-sensitive to lighting that you had to spend 50% of your time running around moving lamps (or buying new ones). The Kinetic, while perhaps not 100% perfect, is about sixteen jillion light years better at its job than they EyeToy, and anyone who says otherwise is being paid by Microsoft. No person with two brain cells to rub together could conclude otherwise.

Now, I'm a MS-hater like most other people here, and I'm definitely no fanboy,. I didn't even *own* a console until I picked up the 360 on the day the Kinetic was released. Personally, I can't stand consoles and think PC gaming is infinitely superior since all console games are just "twicth" shooters for hyperactive teenage boys. So why did I buy an Xbox? For the same reason I bought a Wii - as exercise equipment. Of course, Wii Fit turned out to have a weight limit (!) so it was history very quickly.

But even though I'm a Microsoft and console-hater, I have to say... I'm impressed with both the Kinetic and the Xbox. I vaguely knew that the Xbox could stream video or whatever, but when i set it up to stream all my home movies and audio directly from my PC in about 3 minutes flat, that was nice. The Netflix streaming is *far* more polished than the very basic functionality on my Tivo. The voice commands are nice and I hope they develop them much further.

But the Kinetic was the thing I really wanted, and Your Shape looked like the killer fitness program. And, with some minor caveats, I think that will pretty much be the case. the Kinect tracks you *very* well - not 100%, but pretty damn well. the tip to avoid baggy clothing is very true, though - if you're wearing a big shirt or loose sweatpants, the tracking will definitely be affected. Wear shorts and a t-shirt or something relatively close-fitting. The Your Shape fitness program is amazing, not just because of the gee-whiz thats-so-cool factor of seeing your body there one the screen, with lines and joints superimposed. It really is a great exercise program. It will lead you through a whole aeroobic lesson, or you can play fungames, or do kickboxing or whatever. The tracking works just dandy. Oh, and it doesn't seem to care much about lighting, probably because it has an infrared sensor, so THAT particular annoyance is gone. I haven't tried it in the pitch black - I should, for fun. The one criticism I've seen here that's actually true is that you do need a fair amount of space. I have a pretty big living room so it's not that big of a deal for me, but I did have to move the coffee table. People with tiny apartments might definitely have a problem. But that's my only reasonable critique.

I suspect that, like so many new technologies, how much people like this game will have everything to do with the software. A program that's clearly well-designed, well-tested, and carefully thought out like Your Shape or Dance central will be a joy to play. A game that just h

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[miffo.swe]

I have used it, am very dissapointed. You might think its good, i dont. The lag made it unbearable and while you can get used to it i never will as an avid FPS player.

You really comes across as a rampant fanboy trying to protect "your" decisions.

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[FreekyGeek]

At least I OWN one and have USED it for more than "a little while yesterday." I'd say I speak a lot more authoritatively on the issue.

And yeah, "rampant fanboys" usually start off their rants with "I hate Microsoft and I hate console gaming."

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[miffo.swe]

You own one, you might just want to defend your expenditure? You have no more authority than me. I evaluated it and deemed it "sucks to much to spend that kind of money".

And the best astroturfers always start with saying "i hate Microsoft but THIS product is teh shit!".

Re:The Kinect lags to much

[cablepokerface]

I didn't even *own* a console until I picked up the 360 on the day the Kinetic was released. So why did I buy an Xbox? For the same reason I bought a Wii

So which is true? Did you own one or didn't you? I like your story but things like this set off my BS alert.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing the wii to the Kinect is absurd. One is an accelerometer, the other is a full-body skeletal pose estimator with probably 20 degrees of freedom. Like comparing a flashlight to an LCD display. The only question now is, will Kinect actually work?

If all you're trying to do is light up a dark room, the flashlight will work just as well and be a lot cheaper.

A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[TheEyes]

But just like with the iPad, we've got real innovation here that came out of a closed environment.

I don't see any innovation here. Kinect and iPad are both just evolutionary steps. None of the concepts of these devices are in any form new. To have companies with infinite resources make products out of ideas and concepts that have been researched and prototyped for decades by public institutions as well as the private sector is not innovation.

String enough evolutions together and you get a revolution. Like the Wiimote, which put Bluetooth-enabled accelerometers and infrared cameras into a small handheld device at a price that anyone can afford, this Kinect camera device has the potential to seriously change how the do-it-yourself community interacts with their computers. Think of all the new applications the open source community came up with for the Wiimote, many of which were featured here on /.; now imagine what they'll be able to come up with for this device.

I can't wait to see what comes around when someone builds usable open drivers for this baby. I don't own a 360, but the prospect of plugging this into my computer or HTPC and getting voice controls, facial recognition, and arbitrary movement recognition for use as input are giving me chills. I mean, just look at what you get for $150: two cameras, an IR projector, four microphones, all mounted on a motorized base with hardware/software that can generate a 3D image in approximately realtime. I can't wait to be able to sign my name in midair to use as my password.

"Computer, open Firefox; website: slashdot.org."

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[ledow]

Open source drivers? For an MS-produced device that only works on MS-consoles and probably plays all sorts of non-standard tricks to avoid it's use as a direct PC peripheral? Oh, right. See you in several years then.

$150 actually gets you three very low-spec webcams - Two 640x480, but the other one is 320x240 IR cam almost exactly the same as the WiiMote's infrared "sensor", cheap and most laptops now have them built in "for free". Four microphones (10p throwaway electronics - hence why every laptop has one by default). The expense is in the software and image processing, always has been, always will be, and that's the bit that's INCREDIBLY hard to write accurately and have it work quickly (i.e. chances are that it's set to a particular set of criteria and won't work in odd conditions, won't be programmable and/or puts all it's work to the host processor which means some poor sod has to reinvent all the image processing algorithms without hitting a patent using what is basically three off-the-shelf webcams). I wouldn't be surprised if any "drivers" that do appear for the Kinect actually work because they have been doing this on much cheaper hardware first (e.g. a bunch of second hand 640x480 USB webcams and a multi-input sound card) - hell, getting a simple motion-detection algorithm working can be a pain - ever tried to set up Motion on a couple of cameras? You can spend your life tweaking, making image masks, etc. and that's just to say "the image changed" or "it didn't" against a background of auto-focus, auto-exposure cameras looking into someone's back yard.

And like all things reliant on software-based recognition, it will not be as accurate or as quick or as adjustable as you need it to be. Voice recognition hasn't improved much in 15 years. (But voice synthesis has because that's "easy" in comparison). My bank still can't understand when I say my account number and thus have reverted to DTMF tones to do that entry. Fingerprint recognition hasn't improved much in 15 years (with optical fingerprint scanners like one I own or the ones built into IBM laptops) - hence open-source software that's quite basic is just as good as the commercial offerings for hundreds of pounds and people are touting "iris recognition" as the next best thing (with the same problems, but new rounds of investment). 3D image recognition hasn't improved much in 15 years - robots still bounce off walls they didn't see and cars still crash with "crash-proof" control software (like the extremely expensive and hi-tech demo a few months ago where two "crash-proof" cars rammed each other incessantly over multiple trials because their image recognition and distance sensors just were not processing the data in the right way - in front of the world's press for a "crash-proof" car from a major car manufacturer.

These things has ALWAYS been in their current state, it's just that we can do more of them faster now. It doesn't mean that throwing a quad-core 3GHz at the problem somehow solves the fact that the algorithms are crap, limited and that computers can only do what we tell them and not automatically recognise shapes, sizes, colours, etc. unless told exactly how. Hell, show people a bit of software that can actually work out (vaguely reliably) if there's a cow in an random image and you'll be a millionaire.

The current state of any of these processes is enough for basic tasks (arguably enough for gaming but, again, they've been around for decades so people HAVE used them in video-controlled gaming devices for years for everything from the NES to the PC and they all flopped), but anyone who's ever used voice recognition software for a long time, or been involved with professional projects aimed at image processing will tell you - beyond a certain point, there's no "groundbreaking" tricks to use that can get you better recognition even if you trawl through PhD papers. It's all pretty much the same thing - run an image through some basic Photoshop-style filters, try to identify edges and clusters, filter based

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[Nerdfest]

I watched the MS video demo of this being used to control the xbox dashboard and wasn't impressed. What turned me off was that they don't seem top have a 'click' or selection move, instead using hover delays to select things. Maybe they just didn't have time to implement it properly, but it really needs the ability to click something, whether by pushing your hand forward or something else. More than anything else, this is stopping me from picking one up right now.

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[crow_t_robot]

Just think of what this could mean for internet trolling:
*spread buttcheeks* -> computer makes reply to thread with goatse image

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[gmueckl]

Actually, there are a couple of PhD theses that went into this PrimeSense stuff. They were done in around 2003 to 2007 I think. One of the last Kinect stories featured here on /. was a look back at the product development and it listed the names of some people hinted at their academic works. The people got subsequently hired to work on this stuff. Looking that up will give you a start in researching the science/tech background. The basis is hard science and it has been published. It works not because it does pure image recognition, but because it tries to fit a sophisticated model of a human body into the data gathered from the image. Seemingly, this adds enough reliability to turn it into a consumer device.

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't own a 360, but the prospect of plugging this into my computer or HTPC and getting voice controls, facial recognition, and arbitrary movement recognition for use as input are giving me chills.

  you sit six feet away from your computer when you use it?

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[ledow]

"Sophiscated model" = depth map + two offset images at resolutions where a dozen pixels could represent a major limb. The problem is not forming a "model" from the things in front of you - a $2 laser with a moving mirror does that for every sculpture and work of art in the world in a matter of seconds down to sub-millimetre accuracy - it's interpreting poor data indirectly from cheap sensors and then trying to apply any sort of sophisticated interpretation to that *automatically* given an infinity of possibilities.

Interpreting such data to actually work out what possible positions such data could represent for a single human being standing there is far beyond some of the best stuff operational in ideal lab conditions. Thus it becomes a noise-cancellation exercise and then trying to interpret two-three layers of "blobs" as a human when a human themselves probably couldn't do it with any better accuracy, and certainly not to the extent that non-trivial assumptions (e.g. standing / sitting / moving left / moving right etc. would work out). I'll be impressed if, even with the best PhD work in the world, it can reliably tell the number of people in the image given ideal circumstances and a small group of people just playing a handful of games normally. The initial reviews look like they back me up on this.

"Hard science" and "image recognition" really rub against each other rather than sit in the same sentence - plus it's more a mathematical exercise than computer science. Image processing (and just about any processing of such enormous amounts of sensor data) is *bloody* difficult for even the simplest of tasks, or else we'd be up to here in small robots that cost a fortune but *can* actually hover all your house without running over the cat (hint: the ones we currently have, can't).

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[gmueckl]

I agree with you that plain image processing is bloody hard to get working reliably. Making it work in uncontrolled conditions is additional orders of magnitude harder.

As far as I understand it - not having looked into it too closely - the image data is mostly interpreted based on expected human poses extrapolated from previous frames using a 3D skeleton. That is, it's not just image recognition. There's a (statistical?) model of human movement in there as well and as far as I understand it, the image data without this particular model wouldn't make any sense at all. Not wanting to research this more deeply I'd estimate that possible poses that fit to the picture (which may be a lot) are weighted by how likely it is that the human body could have shifted into that position since the last frame and the most likely one is picked.

Re:A ourney of a Thousand Miles...

[LethargicParasite]

"Computer, open Firefox; website, http: slash slash slash dot dot org... website, slash dot dot org... website, uh..." *hits F6*

execution is important

[Anonymous Coward]

Linus Torvalds places value in a well executed implementation. Isn't there value in producing a very well implemented product?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Confusador]

Wait, you're on /. and you think dancing is different from tilting your hand in time with the music?

I normally love MS, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I swear, it seems like 95% of the amazon reviews were paid for. They are just gushing, and interspersed between these is the occasional sucker who actually bought it complaining. Seems gimmicky to me, but hey, so did the wii at first.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[RMH101]

No, French is conventionally the language of love

CMOS and 3d

[WarJolt]

I have a very basic understanding of how the system works. IR beam gets sent out and the CMOS sensor picks up the pattern and interprets the z axis information.

I would imagine that there are inherent problems with this. If the pattern is too spaced out then resolution suffers. If the pattern is too close together then there are many errors. The processing must be complicated. I bet even the type of clothing you're wearing has an effect on it.

Re:CMOS and 3d

[tequesta]

I don't have a Kinect yet and haven't seen any in-depth examination by a researcher. But normally these things work not by projecting a pattern, but rather infrared light with a large-wavelength modulation. Then each pixel detects the phase offset of the incoming light.

Re:CMOS and 3d

[tgd]

There's lots of articles that talk about it in detail.

The resolution of the grid is a key factor in how positionally accurate the 3-D skeletal model ends up being -- which is why it can't see what your fingers are doing, but can position you pretty accurately.

The same technique in two years when processing power is 4x will allow the hardware to be revved with even more resolution.

You need to keep in mind this is a device sold for a profit at $150 retail that has a webcam, a depth camera, a matrix microphone consisting of four mics, and a motion control rig. Camera resolution and processor speed were clearly matched to the expected 1st generation game needs. And playing around with Video Kinect, it does nearly as good a job tracking the speaker and auto-zooming on the people as a Polycom system costing 10-15x as much.

There's a lot of haters in here, presumably because they either dislike Microsoft or are PS3 fanboys, but I doubt any of them actually read about the hardware or have actually used one.

Re:CMOS and 3d

[CityZen]

This is why the device is "optimized" to work within a given depth range. Note that the depth cam looks to be fixed focus, not auto-focus as the summary says.

I'd like to see the results of someone operating the device in a dark room and looking at the results through a high-speed camera with good IR sensitivity.

Re:CMOS and 3d

[CityZen]

There are multiple ways to use cameras to detect depth. Both your summary and the above summary are possible, as well as other methods.

Re:CMOS and 3d

[tequesta]

You're right, it uses pattern-based triangulation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7nRKU0nFxA

Re:CMOS and 3d

[bjk002]

Thanks. That was my impression as well. give it a year or two, along with a few firmware updates, and this things potential is huge!

the OP is spot on for lag

[aepervius]

a kinect review
Highs:

* Just plain fun
* Limitless potential, could move beyond gaming.
* New, innovative technology will only get better.
Lows:

* $150 price on top of Xbox 360 console
* Half-second of inherent lag
* Fairly basic games
* Only handles two players at a time



german summry
Approximative transaltion in english :
The setup is a problem too. So kinect needs really much place and has problem with light. One tester from joystiq was not
recognized due to his glasses, because it was reflecting too much light.

Whoever want to paly to 2 needs 3 meter of free palce from TV (9 foot aprox) which needs a lot of moving furniture by many.
Which means also that the dashboard features like move command cannot be used when one want to do only a to watch a film, not to play.
Also the price is critized.



IGN video review linked ina rticle

Mixed reviews for kinect



My verdict from what i all read : the lag will probably limit it to games where it is not too important (casual family game, or game where a 1/3 to 1/5 second lag has no impact). Tech looks good and could be a revolution, but at the moment too expensive. Wait and see for Kinect 1.2 with a good offering of games.

Re:the OP is spot on for lag

[Anonymous Coward]

"Half second of inherent lag" is bullshit, by the way.

I played with Kinect at Teched last month

[pinkushun]

It's helluva fun when you get the hang of it!

Re:I played with Kinect at Teched last month

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, dude!

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but it's the only language on an English language forum. For the same reason, I don't post to French or German forums and then get upset when they have difficulty understanding me. Likewise, as a guy, I don't use the female bathrooms in restaurants and when they complain, use as my excuse "male is not the only gender on the planet". The correct response, if someone questions your use of a non-native language, is to try and rephrase in a way that better conveys your meaning, not to start flaming everyone.

It might bring in more gamers

[Shivetya]

like how the ease of use of the Wii did (well once they fixed that damned controller). The difference is, with the Wii you can "game" it. As in, half the time the motions you make with the controller really don't have any bearing on what your avatar is doing. What I have see of kinect is that we finally have a system which does what you physically do. None of the "interpretation" like the Wii controller .

It will probably open up gaming to more people now. I can see great uses in exercise programs here, your own personal trainer who really does know if your doing it right. Think of the ability to extend this to at home rehabilitation! That alone makes this device a break through.

Many of us keep lamenting all those wonder sci fi depictions of what computer technology can do and when its delivered some simply dismiss it because its from Microsoft.

It is a good start. Perhaps it will give other people the inspiration to help us make a real leap.

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[cptdondo]

It will probably open up gaming to more people now. I can see great uses in exercise programs here, your own personal trainer who really does know if your doing it right. Think of the ability to extend this to at home rehabilitation! That alone makes this device a break through.

If our society wasn't so litigious, I could see that. But the first time someone gets a little sore, they will hit the Kinect Personal Trainer software author with a multi-million dollar lawsuit.

Too bad; I think you really have a great idea there. If the kinect is accurate enough, I can see a lot of physical trainer applications here.

I'm trying to get set up for a shooting match; minor variations in position can lead to large errors which result in you being off target. A miss is being off 1" at 25 yards - can the kinect pick up my position accurately enough to tell me that it's correct?

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[sznupi]

Or too many people might hate it precisely because "gaming" it is not possible - otherwise, maybe, by now, they would go out, exercise, et al already?

Though who knows, perhaps online system of achievements will result in some big gains in regards to population health... (the important remaining question would be how to trick people similarly with Farmville-like stuff & urban gardening / urban village)

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[Omestes]

Or some people dislike the idea of it for the same reason my Wii has been sitting around forgotten and gather dust. I don't want to be "tricked" into being active and healthy, I want to sit on my sofa drinking Mountain Dew, eating Cheetos and vegging out. Its called relaxing, I often like to do it. When I'm in the mood to be active I will hop into my car, drive a couple minutes, and go hiking; or I will go to the gym and do actual, structured, exercise; or I will do yard work; or I will do something active, period. I really don't need my leisure activity to promote a healthy lifestyle. What next, books that have weights attached and have spring steel pages that take x amount of effort (scaled with readability level)? Movies with treadmills attacked to the motor that spins the DVD?

I fear a world (or the next console generation) where everything is based around gimmicky movement sensors.

Flailing around does not lead to immersion, nor does it increase the enjoyability of most games. Improving world design, stories, and gameplay in crease immersion. There is no shame in mashing "A". If anything, currently, movement sensors HURT immersion, since it is used like a crappy gimmick, and calls attention to itself ("flail your left arm! Aren't I clever, making you flail it, see movement! yes movement!!"), much like crappy 3D movies that feel the need to break the wall of the screen (ala Friday the 13th part 3) ("ZOMG, that machete is going to poke you in the eye, in the most headache inducing way!").

   

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[k_187]

While I don't disagree with you, the success of things like WiiFit illustrates that not everyone feels as such. Also, there's no reason that both types of gameplay can't exist.

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[Omestes]

Also, there's no reason that both types of gameplay can't exist.

If they coexist, I have no problem. I just fear that they won't. The unbridled success of the Wii risks pushing all of the console manufacturers over to the "motion is awesome" camp, making all next generation consoles into a Wii clone.

I would also have no problem with my Wii if there was a way to allow me to play without motion as well. Make it optional and everything is fine.

I suppose it is a deep seated fear that tomorrow will suck more than today.

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[StikyPad]

I sort of see this like an exercise bike. Everyone thinks it will change the way they live, that they'll become more fit, and that they'll have no excuse not to exercise due to weather/time/transportation/whatever. Instead of thinking "I can just ride my stationary bike while I watch my favorite shows," it's "I can exercise while playing games." (And we already have the latter -- they're called sports.) Anyway, these are all potentially true, but when it comes down to it, most people will play with it for a week and then forget about it.

People are either motivated to undertake physical activity, or they're not. I don't think video games will change this long-term in any meaningful way. At best, it will perhaps provide some sort of competitive mechanism for people who enjoy physical competition in the first place, and go on to be ignored by most people for the same reason most people don't go to the gym -- we're fucking lazy.

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[sznupi]

...an illusion, typically.

Re:It might bring in more gamers

[sznupi]

Though OTOH in "traditional" forms of relaxing / leisure activity we also mostly just allow ourselves to be tricked into something.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[delinear]

I think that's the point - not only that the two things have different levels of complexity, but that they're meant for entirely different tasks (hence the different levels of complexity).

So what about PC?

[SharpFang]

What about Microsoft's PC gaming revival initiative? Is it dead already?

It would be actually quite interesting to see Kinect used with PC. Could result in many cool projects outside gaming.

"xbox pause"

[Joce640k]

I remember saying "calculator!" to Windows 95 using a free microphone and the built-in calculator would pop up.

15 years later and people are impressed by this...impressed enough to spend $150 on it?

Re:"xbox pause"

[sznupi]

What's not be impressed with?

Only to be used indoors

[gmuslera]

If that amount of cameras detect having the blue sky of panic it will kill your player.

Re:Only to be used indoors

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, but you will have to recalibrate your kinect if the weather changes.

Kinect probably will be a failure in japan...

[Z80a]

...till someone gets it to run on pc, and certain... "not so clean" software developers like illusionsoft get their dirty hands on it.,

Then probably the thing will just go boom there, as lets just say the device is quite.. more adequate to these .. kind of games.

Re:Kinect probably will be a failure in japan...

[jack2000]

How nicely racist of you. Because we all know pervs exist only in Japan...

Re:Kinect probably will be a failure in japan...

[Anonymous Coward]

Like your mom! I love sticking my Wii controller in her... saggy tittes and all. I have a big nigger cock, BTW, and it is hard to fit in her chink-mouth!

Re:Kinect probably will be a failure in japan...

[Z80a]

Well, they're worldwide of course, but these kind of erm.. interactive games are more popular by there.
the rest of the pervs will probably apreciate the voice commands/hand gestures to easily skip to other parts of a certain movie or pause it.

Re:Kinect probably will be a failure in japan...

[Culture20]

How nicely racist of you.

Haven't you heard? Some people say the Kinect is racist.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[the_fat_kid]

What?

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the wii does work... without question...

Well, it does "something" reliably (which might well beat a more ambitious but failed attempt). But compare Dance Dance Revolution style games on the two; with Kinect, you dance and it watches you dance and scores you; on the wii, you just tilt your hand in time with the music. Big difference.

The amazing thing is that Just Dance on the Wii was a suprise 3rd party succes selling 2 million worldwide (http://uk.wii.ign.com/articles/108/1081134p1.html) despite low reviewscores. So even with the low tech measuring tilt scoring mechanism they managed to make a good selling profitable game.

Now we can make a Kinect Dance Dance Revolution game for X-Box that has more accurate scoring but wil it realy matter. Its a game not a dance tutoring game. The main object of the game is to make you do stupid moves in front of your friends. On the Wii Just Dance manages to do that with just the basic hardware and a game. On the X-box you need a $ 150 add-on and a game. I'm sure that part of the succes of Just Dance is low price an no extra addon required.

Sure the X-box games is techincaly superior but when you look at the intended market that won't matter a thing....

but how do I trigger things, if I want to?

[Kartu]

"Not having to press" something is nice, but what if I actually want to fire an action by hardly noticeable movement of the finger? I guess I can't do it with Kinect as it's too subtle a movement to reliably detect.

Why is lack of buttons considered to be a step forward?

Nah, they bought it

[Kartu]

As far as I remember Microsoft simply bought a company that developed kinect (that Sony had considered and refused to buy).
Soon we'll see whether Sony's decision was right.

Re:but how do I trigger things, if I want to?

[ThirdPrize]

It was never designed for playing "COD Black OPs" was it? Most iPhone games wouldn't work with a joypad either. They will just find some other way of doing things. The trouble with the XBOX fraternity is its so hung up on shooters, in a way the WIii crowd wasn't.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Anonymous Coward]

What?

Homosaywhat?

New Grammar Nazi features please?

[RulerOf]

"I speak it perfect" is grammaticality incorrect.

Slashdot coders needs to augment the available HTML markup to include sentence diagramming features.

There truly is nothing like tacking an adjective onto a verb in a troll-induced defense! It clearly shows an individual's ability to write professional.

...ly.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[RulerOf]

What?

Homosaywhat?

What. You happy now?

Shame I'm not using my Mac.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[xtracto]

Ok let me give it a try:

Parent is saying that:
1. It is false that Microsoft spent millions of dollars in research to conceive the Kinect.

2. The Kinect system is not a groundbreaking product. In fact, all the bad things that Microsoft said about the Wii are still present in the Kinect (whichever they are).

3. In conclussion, Microsoft has spent at most 20 or 30 dollars in total, considering prior art.

En cuanto a los gringos que no saben hablar otro idioma y critican a los que no hablamos Inglés como primer idioma; chinguen a su madre y a ver si se culturizan un poco más... de verdad, hablar otra lengua no duele y les expande el panorama (y la cultura).

LINUX!

[Donoman]

Microsoft and apple both suck. Any Linuxfags out there?

So, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck are YOU? Just because YOU don't see it, doesn't mean the rest of the world doesn't. I'm sorry, what the fuck have you created recently?

HUH?!

Can't fucking hear you!

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Varkias]

Comparing the wii to the Kinect is absurd.

No it's not absurd. They are competing for the same demographic, casual gamers. Rather than getting caught up in the full-body skeletal, 100,000 degrees of freedom sales talk the real question is: Is there a library of great games that make it worth paying $150? Right not IMO the answer is no. Getting caught up with the technical aspects of the Kinect (yes they are impressive) doesn't matter for most people. Historical examples prove that having the most powerful hardware doesn't matter: DS vs PSP, winner: DS, PS2 vs Xbox vs Gamecube, winner: PS2, on and on. It's been said before, powerful hardware doesn't sell systems, a library of great games sell systems.

I'm anxious to see

[bjk002]

how the accessory market grows and ties in with the Kinect.

Imagine a bunch of Kinect identifiable accessories, where you can emulate a multitude of varying activities.

Fun, fun, fun.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[jayme0227]

AHAHAHA. Slashdotters are nerds.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[MikeBabcock]

One has buttons. Buttons are good.

Forget the XBox

[Musicologynut]

I'll get one when someone backhacks the drivers for the kinect and publishes them for Linux. It is a nice bit of technology, but it would be far more fun to play with the sensor array attached to a penguin than an XBox...

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Cederic]

Which is ironic given who speaks it.

Re:but how do I trigger things, if I want to?

[thoth]

That other way of doing things you mention... like maybe, a controller with buttons? There are other things buttons do besides shoot game guns. The Ars Technica review of Kinect covered the driving game, where you can't accelerate or brake, only steer. Unless they release a controller that allows more interaction, the games for Kinect will be on-rails variants.

Not interested

[bussdriver]

The wii costs much less - just the sensor here costs as much as a Wii.

I don't have to move around like a nut on the Wii unless I want to-- the motion is relative so one can play it without having to make it into a work out. The kids... they over do it and then fall back to minimal movement. I don't think it will stick for that long since you have to move your whole body the way they require. What I've seen is that people get sick of the full motion and find an alternative less intense style of playing the Wii because its relative and more forgiving in how it works.

I never was interested in being made to move around to mimic doing something real and then all this hype about realistic graphics and physics-- its a brain dead approach by trying to recreate reality - if this stuff is progressing towards simulating real activities I may as well GO OUTSIDE and actually do something FOR REAL. I can't race a fancy car and won't pay to fly a plane - those simulators make sense but I'd much rather race in Mario Kart than simulate racing a realistic Porsche. Just as I don't mind motion input that fits in with the action in the game; I don't want to jump around the room.

Re:The $150 device that Microsoft put hundreds of

[Isotopian]

I just used one for the first time last night. It is shockingly accurate, extremely intuitive, and just plain works. Even with four of us, at a reasonable state of intoxication, it had no issues with us walking in and out of the sensor, and the facial recognition worked flawlessly. I'm impressed as all hell, and plan on buying one now just from using it for a few hours. The wii is a childs toy. This is an adults toy, and being able to fully control your avatar without thinking about it one bit is fun. Lots of fun. It works.

B.S, M.S. & PhD

[Anonymous Coward]

Devils weighs in ...

ms has put little innovation into anything instead looking for the meatest market and pandering only to the most juicey parts of that in the last few years. They release products that are supposed to be quality offerings but are merely copies of other's products with some "advancents".

Anyone that has researched the 'marketing' can easily attest to the hundreds of millions they have pounded into black hat seo, clone sites, faux referential sources, etc, attempting to convince everyone that everyone loves their products and that there are no problems with them, in predominantly nontechnical attempts to garner market share in any venture. Remember that more than half of any comments related to ms products are reciprocated responses - paid for testimonies, glad hands and fangurls.

Any innocent and objective offerings about how great all the ms junk is are from those that were never really doing much with the technology available previouosly and are glitzed out over being able to put a horse head on a photo or with idiot manageement helps for categorizing their archives.

ms intelligence is dying, and it is indeed unfortunate that the u.s. is so strung out on commercials and celebrities, they need media to validate their ridiculously shallow lives. Commercials portray unrealistic visuals meant to tune the subconscious to a favorable reference at time of recall, such as "what to get for Christmas, without any research. Consumer are providing less and less technical and helpful information and fewer and fewer test demo set-ups. You buy it - you stuck with it. Few realize that markets are actually gouging consumers more than ever, since tough economic times. The kids say the response time sucks 1st and foremost. The new ms phone commercials have slight humor....