Slashdot Mirror
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.
...that Microsoft comes up with something very cool on its own (i.e., without buying someone else's product and rebranding it), they have this frustrating tendency to screw it up with unimaginative business practices. In this instance, I give it at most two years before someone comes out with a similar product that will immediately charge to the lead in the market. At that point, Microsoft will try to catch up and that's what they'll be doing all the way up to the point where they discontinue the product. Their reliance on product limitations as a business practice may have helped them in the early years, but it's been a long time since it's been of any benefit.
I'm not a fan of Microsoft (though they make THE best keyboard with their Natural Ergonomic 4000), but I can only think that this is seriously frustrating for people who work there.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
How would the Kinect be used as a TV remote replacment? Swipe left for down channel, right for next? Up for volume up and down for volume down? Ok now I want to jump from channel 34 to 21, what swipe gesture would I use for that? How about channel info? Will there be Kinect gesture classes in our children's school years? I hear people talking about the Kinect like its the second coming but other then specific problems that could be addresed by it for the most part its the child like idea of of having a Minority Report interface that has people excited.