What Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't

An opinion piece at CNN looks at Microsoft's Xbox Kinect, praising the system's capabilities not for gaming, but for what it does to the video viewing experience. "The idea of being able to ditch your table full of remote controls and just use your hands and voice to interact with the TV is compelling. It's much nicer than QWERTY keyboards, which are a terrible idea in the living room. It's also better than Wii-like remote controls, or even using an iPad or smartphone as your TV remote, a feature that cable companies are increasingly rolling out." The problem, as they see it, is Microsoft's inability to actually bring this into common usage for regular television viewing. "It seems like the company is tied too much to the Xbox's substantial gaming revenue to split the Xbox TV stuff off as a separate product — even though there's a huge population of non-gamers who probably have no interest in buying an Xbox." Perhaps this is something that can be addressed by others when the Kinect SDK is released.

Comments

This resembles TV Shop...

[Anonymous Coward]

In commercials you always see how some ordinary thing is so very difficult and cubersome to do. You know... "Vacuuming under the sofa is so hard and the vacuum cleaner doesn't fit there well and you have to (*gasp*) kneel down and it still won't be perfectly clean... But if you buy Super Cleaner (TM) RIGHT NOW you'll...". At that point, every regular person should go "Excuse me? I've vacuumed under the sofa and it's not that difficult, really". The commercials are trying to create a need that doesn't exists because there is a product that has been designed to fulfill that need. This sounds similar.

The reason why it's difficult to come up with a replacement for a remote is that there isn't any real need for that. Are the remotes really that hard to use? You pick one up. lay on the sofa and can do anything with a small finger gesture. I don't understand why they're trying to create need for a replacement with those very artificial sounding arguments. "It's hard to pick up the right remote"? Oh please...

Re:The very few times...

[benjymouse]

Then you don't recall correctly, obviously. Microsoft did actually develop Project Natal within its own organization (and through a wholly-owned subsidiary). They are using hardware developed by an Israeli company.