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Sony's Favorite Gadget Is Kinect
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Gary Marshall writes that.Microsoft's marvelous motion-sensing device is doing really good work for Sony, helping the PS4 outsell the Xbox One in the US and rocketing it to the top of the world's console sales charts. With the Xbox One $100 more expensive than the PlayStation 4, the Kinect is the explanation for the huge difference in price between the rival platforms says Marshall. "That kind of money makes a huge difference, and I wonder: if Microsoft had kept the Kinect as an optional add-on, which we all know it should be, would the Xbox One be much more attractive?" Ben Kuchera describes the peripheral as one of the most hated pieces of equipment in current use. "The system is still new, but every Xbox One owner now has a peripheral that has little reason to exist, aids their gaming in very few real ways and costs them a significant amount of money." The common defense of the Kinect is that developers wouldn't support it unless it was forced on consumers but according to Kuchera pushing a product on the public with the hope that it will be useful once we have it is a cruel inversion of how product adoption should be handled. "The forced pack-in proves something we already knew at the beginning of this generation: Almost no one would want to buy the Kinect separately if they were given the choice," writes Kuchera. "It's time to make the Kinect a peripheral, not a pack-in.""
Microsoft started including ads on the xbox home page last generation. It was enough for me to entirely drop purchasing anything at all for it(and definitely not xbox 1). I had no reason to believe the PS4 is better in that regard, so they get ignored too.
I wish they'd both make everything a lot less social and less connected. I don't want to go into another persons house if they have the NSA/GCHQ spy cam installed. I don't know what the police think I've done and come get me regardless. Think they wouldn't?
Luckily the games are awful so I've not need to buy either.
It's all locked-down, proprietary junk made by companies with no ethical standards. No one with principles buys this garbage, anyway. Most gamers will, but that's because they're like drug addicts.
Microsoft is going to hold on to that thing for as long as they can. It's not going away for several different reasons.
The first and largest is that the Kinect is a product differentiater. It makes the XBone different from the PS4. There really isn't that much a difference between the two boxes otherwise. Fine, you can go on with the technical differences between the types of RAM and the custom silicon for the XBone's APU but those are not large concerns for Mom and Dad buying little Sally's birthday present.
Until MS comes up with something besides the software that makes their product different, the Kinect is going to hang on. But the second that happens, it'll be tossed. They know they've screwed the pooch here. They know exactly what it cost them in terms of customer relations and in terms of developers.
.
Maybe the new CEO will bring a change of attitude...
I don't want to see McDonalds garbage every time I play a game.
Does the PS3/PS4 show ads?
And why would I give a crap what he thinks?
Kinect sucks, but why quote fucking ben kuchera about it? That guy is a moron and a tool.
http://i.imgur.com/KON0j7C.jpg
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The Kinect isn't the primary reason that the XB1 costs more and has worse performance than the PS4. The primary reason is that during the design phase, Microsoft's engineers overestimated the cost of GDDR5 RAM. As a result, they decided to go with DDR3 instead of GDDR5 for the 8GB of system memory, and compensate for the slower speeds by including a 32MB cache ("eSRAM") on the die. This cache is so large in terms of die space that it meant there was much less room for GPU – which is why the XB1 only has 768 shaders, compared to the PS4's 1152. Meanwhile, developers have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get decent performance out of the XB1 by carefully managing allocation of the on-die cache, while on the PS4 they can simply rely on all 8GB of memory being fast enough because it's all GDDR5.
So the result of this miscalculation is that the XB1 is more expensive to build (due to a faster die), more complex, and slower. Oops.
My awesome Dad wanted to give me a new gaming system for Chrismas. He wasn't sure if he should have bought the PS4 or Xbone. "I bought you the Xbone because it was more expensive. I got the right one, right?" I couldn't bring myself to tell him that it only cost more because of kinect and that I planned on buying a PS4 for this very reason. I'm very grateful and I do enjoy my Xbone but I certainly was not willing to pay $100 buy one myself. I also approve of his methond for figuring out right system to buy lol.
I find the kinect spooky and intrusive in many ways. Not just that it is a monitor device that can be abused by "some" government but all the information it can gather about the users including health information. I don't trust any company with more personal information than absolutely necessary, and the kinect gets too close.
Price is set by companies based on their assessment of supply and demand, not cost. That's why historically consoles lose money on direct hardware sales; the idea is to penetrate the market enough to get sufficient owners of your console, then charge license fees for all the games on there. Selling consoles is a mix of exclusive games, graphical fidelity, and price point, but not cost.
MS made a bet that they could get sufficient market penetration with the Kinect to create a critical mass of gamers who have Kinects, attracting developers to make games for it, which gives them more exclusives as Sony and Nintendo could never get a motion sensor required game on their consoles. However, again, it's about market penetration to make this work, so if the upped the price by $100 for the Kinect then that was a really poor, short sighted decision.
I applaud MS for making a gamble with a new technology with potential, however this was a substantial risk, as the history of non-controller hardware is littered with the corpses of glove controllers, light guns, and dance dance revolution mats.
I have one someplace in a box. We used it about a month and decided it was useless crapware. The old WII does bowling SO much better than the kinnect is about the first thing you find out. It was always going out of area or not sensing the right motion and otherwise being useless.
They could have gone without a disc.Make it like a Steam box.
There are rumors they considered it, and I wish they would have. Chances are they could have still bundled the Kinect and been at price parity without the BD drive.
I was really looking forward to the discless console. I don't normally resell my games, and I have a gamer family of 4 with multiple consoles. For me, it was a huge win to buy everything digital and never have it damaged, be able to play it on every device without buying a second copy, etc...
Plus, they had the option to cut out the distribution layer. Even if they didn't lower the price for the digital copy, more money would have gone directly to the developer, and I'm sure some of it would have also gone to Microsoft.
They majorly screwed up the PR around this, though, and backed out. When all of the "always on" rumors started, they should have jumped on it explaining all of the benefits of a digital download only model. Instead, they did a "no comment" and everyone focused on the negatives.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
I thought it was XCP.
I use the Kinect rather heavily. As I use my XBox One as a media center more than a game system, the Kinect plays a large role in my usage. I like not needing to find a remote control to do anything with my setup. Also, with Skype I am able to see my grand children, as they have an XBox One as well. The ease of use is such that even my wife, who is not a geek, is able to utilize the system. Now, could they have sold it as an add-on, or as a bundle option. Yup.
Merf
If you want one cheap and don't want to wait for delivery for your Sony, simply check your area thrift stores. They are almost as common as Guitar Hero Guitars, Microphones, and Wii Balance Boards.
FYI, the Rock Band/Guitar Hero microphones show up on a PC as a decent Logitech USB Microphone. Not a bad mic for under $5.
The truth shall set you free!
If I were invested in the whole Xbox ecosystem I would resent having to shell out more for a device that basically brings nothing to the table as a gamer. Looking across at my PS4 'rivals' they basically get a more powerful console for a lot less money. To add insult to injury Xbox fanbois try and point out the flaws in the PS4 ecosystem, flaws which the XBox has too.. "Look, you have to pay for multiplayer now!", which although is a new added expense, was ALWAYS an expense for the XBox. Microsoft have already tweaked the XBox OS (Whatever its called) to reduce the CPU and memory usage of this device, but in doing so they admit that their console is the weaker of the two spec wise. All the way resisting the overwhelming public demand that they need to drop the requirement for the device and instead pushing their "living room agenda". In this day and age people are price conscious, Microsoft forgets this. Sure there are exclusives that tempt people to drop cash on an XBox, but the financial difference is so large, this "exclusive" system doesn't have the pull it once had. Microsoft needs to drop the mandatory add on requirement before its too late.
This reminds me of way back in the day when SOE increased the subscription to Everquest from $9.99 to $15.99 per month. Everyone decried it as the end to SOE, because they lost about 30% of their accounts (mostly alt accounts) But they were wrong, it was a great plan financially. If you have 100 users @ $10/month you're making $1000/month. If you have 67 customers @ $16/month you make $1072 AND you have less overhead. Also, a lot of those users eventually came back at the higher rate. SOE was making more money than ever and had fewer customers to serve. Not only that, but they set the standard for all their future MMOs and in fact, the industry in general settled on that rate.
So the question isn't in the popularity of the xbox, it's the profitability. If the Kinect makes each user more valuable via marketing and such, then the lower number of users may be a moot point. The only question is: Just how valuable will that marketing data be?
....all the hatred for Kinect. People cite privacy and all that, but the hatred for Kinect goes back much farther than that. There was incredible hatred for the device at the initial release well before there were any privacy concerns. That's a shame, since it is the most innovative thing that Microsoft has ever developed. Download Kinect Party and play the demo for awhile--it's incredible that they actually were able to make something like this even work!! I have always thought it was very cool. The kids love it--a lot of them don't even know how to play a standard controller game. In fact, the only real "failure" of the Kinect system was by developers failing to realize its full potential. The reason it wasn't "optional" in the XBox One was that it's an important interface into the whole system--ideally, with its incredible revolution, it would also act as an add on controller in games (although that's not been realized, yet). I don't understand why people clutch so tightly to their 20 year old controllers like it's the Bible. Can't we try something new?
Every single Xbox owner I know that has a Kinect does not use it at all. the games for it suck, even Forza Horizon had support for it but it rarely works right. and if you have windows behind you it fails completely.
The $100 difference does make a difference as well, I know a lot of hardcore console gamers looking at the PS4 instead of the Xbone this time around, and they were Xbox360 hardcore fanboys.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
pushing a product on the public with the hope that it will be useful once we have it is a cruel inversion of how product adoption should be handled.
Nonsense. People buy a product like a game console speculating that they will get future use out of it. This doesn't always pan out, as many second and third-gen consoles can demonstrate quite well. You can certainly make the argument (and I believe the author has) that the XBone raises the risk too high, and that's a valid point, but the only inversion going on here is the one between reality and wishful thinking.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I love Kinect Fitness for working out. I bought it on purpose.
Yes exactly like drug addicts. We hold jobs, have families, live long lives, and stay out of trouble with law enforcement. Exactly like drug addicts.
The sort of thing they're well known for, basically the MO of MS: force an unpopular product/feature onto an existing client base and just expect them to suck it up now or wait for the "corrected" release (the next version). Either way, they'll pay eventually.
And yet in spite of this institutionalized douchebaggery, they somehow keeping making money. Someone please remind me again how up is down, black is white. What a world.
As much as I'm not in favor of an always on camera controlled by a shady mega-corporation, anyone who lived through the late 80's-early 90's knows how little third party support you get when you have optional components.
I'm sure there were plenty more, but here are a few off the top of my head. (for the Genesis) Sega CD, Sega 32x. (for the NES) Powerglove, (for the Saturn) Twin-Stick, (for the PS2) Trance Vibrator, (for the DC) omg...so many. Maracas, Fishing Reels, Mice, Keyboards, Microphones, Cameras, etc.
None of the above got much love from developers, because of market fragmentation. The good news (for DC owners) was that those controllers allowed flawless ports of their arcade titles since you had the same controller setup...and also the Trance Vibrator is both super creepy and clearly brought to you by the same minds that created tentacle rape pr0n.
I guess the PS4 has ads, since everyone here is saying so. But I've never noticed them. I mean, if you are on the store, there are ads for games of course, that's what the store is. But however they're doing it on the regular home menu, it isn't glaring.
But I was XBOX 360 last generation, but I got the PS4 because it is supposed to be easier for independent developers to develop for it. And I didn't have a Blu-ray player. Now it's cool because I can still play Titanfall when it comes out, albeit on the last gen system.
The xbox's problem was microsoft's failure to demonstrate the kinect's value by making sure there were good launch titles that used it to it's fullest potential.
It's still a great piece of technology and the killer app would probably be a fighting game if the system is precise enough to support it's use. Honestly, it's the only reason I might have had to buy a console rather than sticking with pc gaming, or eventually turning a pc into a steambox. Because it offers possibilities you won't find anywhere else.
So you're saying it's like the NES robot?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Says you.
"Recent research conducted by independent investigators concerning the relationship between crime and narcotic (primarily heroin) addiction has revealed a remarkable degree of consistency of findings across studies. The major conclusion supported by the majority of these studies is that narcotic addicts commit a vast amount of crime and that much of this is directly related to the need to purchase drugs. A large proportion of the crimes committed does not consist merely of drug sales or possession, but involves other criminal behaviors including serious crimes. The strongest evidence of a causal relationship between narcotic drug use and crime is derived from longitudinal studies in which the amount of crime committed during periods of active addiction far exceeds that committed during periods of nonaddiction."
http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abstract/1985/02000/The_Criminality_of_Narcotic_Addicts.6.aspx
Intimate relationships between human beings are more complex than that of the relationship between your bone and your hand.
If people didn't care about graphical performance, they'd buy a xbox 360, PS3, or Wii U. Hell, graphical performance is why new video games are being made today. If performance is not needed, couldn't that game have been made 10 or 20 years ago? This is why there not as many new turn based strategy games these days, most of the obvious strategy game types were made back in the 1990s.
Bill Gates personally forced Microsoft to spend BILLIONS buying every available depth sensor company in his ultimate goal of including a MILITARY GRADE depth camera in the Xbox One. Kinect 2 has ZERO relationship with the technology in Kinect (the original). They carry the same name, but Kinect 2 is like a ICBM compared to the stone-club of the Kinect.
And why? Kinect (the original) had already proven that the gaming opportunities for such sensors were limited in the extreme, and far too unappealing to the average console gamer to make any worthwhile dent in the gaming market.
Kinect2 is about extending NSA spying into the homes of millions of ordinary people. Gates is a EUGENICIST who travels the world giving lectures about how the 'cattle' (ordinary Humans) must be more effectively 'farmed' for the benefit of the only people that matter- the emergent elites. He doesn't worry that such vile activity will impact in a negative sense on the success of Microsoft projects- he comes from the same Eugenic tradition in the USA that so inspired the Nazis in their policies of 'racial purity'.
Bill Gates actually formed a partnership with Rupert "Fox News" Murdoch to create the horrifying inBloom database (Victorian paedophiles referred to their child victims as 'in bloom') that tracks EVERY aspect of every American child's life. You'll notive that the owners of Slashdot give ZERO attention to the inBloom initiative, or the 'oddity' of Mr 'MSNBC' working hand-in-hand with Mr 'Fox News'.
You betas are told, especially by people like the owners of Slashdot, that Murdoch and Gates lie at diametric opposites of the political spectrum, but in reality Gates is proud to acknowledge Tony Blair's personal 'Goebbels' as a fellow 'elite'.
Snowden has finally hammered home to you betas that whatever spying is technically possible, the NSA engage in it, regardless of the value of the intelligence thus gathered. Bill Gates and his NSA partners created the Xbox One spy platform to be the most Orwellian imaginable. Why the vile shills tell you betas to ask "why would they do such a thing", Snowden shows again and again that it has nothing to do with 'why', but the maximum abuse of power.
Bill Gates wants to groom sheeple society. To control how and what they are taught at school (his 'common core' initiative). To ensure that every ordinary person sees themselves as the slave of the state, and never sees the mechanisms of the state as their servants. Orwell's 1984 was NOT about the effectiveness of surveillance in identifying real 'terrorists'. No, it was about the oppressive nature of 'full surveillance' methods like those of the Xbox One in grinding down ordinary Humanity.
Bill Gates is open in his calling for a permanent, highly controlled 'slave' class that exists purely to serve the needs of an 'elite' class. He acknowledges, just as his Eugenic predecessors did in the early part of the 20th Century, that 'slave' does not mean the outdated concept of crude Human ownership. It means the Orwellian version of slavery, where ordinary people are conditioned by the mainstream media and schooling to have no mental ability to conceive of alternative forms of existence.
Why do you think Microsoft pays so much money to have vile shills blitz forums like this telling you that it is 'GOOD' that the NSA can spy on you through that console that cost you so much of your hard earned money?
I know, hold off on the troll mod for just a second...
Seriously, Apple has always taken the "my way or the highway" stance. You WILL use MP4s. You WILL have a fingerprint reader. You WILL have the iTunes store. And, sonofabitch, it's working for them. And it's not even Apple - every manufacturer does this. There's all sorts of weird or in-house developed features which could be optional but which aren't because making it optional doesn't serve the purpose of the manufacturer.
I like to hate on Microsoft as much as the next guy, but this isn't some special Microsoft dance.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Oh, sure, you think it's creepy. Maybe I think it's kind of erotic - you know, someone could be watching any time. Hell, we do it in the room with the kinect 'cause maybe somebody is watching. It's like doing it in the park after hours. Sure, there's probably nobody around, but you're gettin busy and, really, anybody could be watching.
The original Kinect hardware was one of the fastest selling consumer electronics devices in history.
http://www.1up.com/news/kinect...
That was when it was an optional add-on.
My kids play X360 games via connect exclusively.
I mostly play FM4 on the 360, with a racing wheel. In fact, the only time a controller gets used is to navigate DVD menus.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
You mean his mom's basement, right?
A gin in the hand is worth two in the bottle.
The Xbox One does not use the same architecture as the 360, the 360 (and PS3) uses the PowerPC architecture which isn't used much any more. The Xbox One and the PS4 both utilize x86 architecture. The only thing the Xbox One and 360 have in common hardware-wise is use of a smaller secondary cache of RAM that is faster than standard memory. The Kinect costs around $75 to manufacture and even if they cut the price down $399 for a system that didn't include the Kinect they would be loosing over $20 on every system sold (The Xbox One base system costs more to make than PS4 base system) Microsoft messed up big time as they are stuck with the system that costs more to make but offers less power than its major competitor (PS4)..
The reason the Kinect is bundled is because if it's not bundled game developers can't assume it's there. With the One, you can now assume there is always a Kinect.
Shit, it just recognizing me when I sit down is worth an extra $25, Zoo Tycoon is worth another $25 of value to me. Seems they're only about $50 in the hole from the cost, and it's only been out a few months.
How would the NSA be able to see in your living room?
Credibility lost.
MS made a choice to have a platform with more sensors than a gamepad. Apple made a similar choice when they packaged a tilt-sensor, light meter, and digital compass in the iPhone, not one of which had a compelling reason to exist, and each of which added to the cost of the device. Add-on devices don't sell. (Excepting the rock-band fad) If you want to be innovative, you need to have a platform that allows it.
There is a lot of very cool tech in and that can be built around a Kinect.
Obviously. (rolling eyes)
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
I cannot believe that on a site that bills itself as news for nerds, we are slamming Microsoft for taking the bold step of bundling what is the most advanced motion sensing, image/voice recognition system available outside of DOD contractors with a gaming console and doing it for just $100 more than its otherwise similarly spec'd competitor. For everybody that complains that the kinetic should have been sold separately you got to remember that because of the lower volume and the added cost of packaging, advertising, etc a standalone kinetic would be priced in the $150-$200 range. Microsoft did its part, now its up to nerds to see where we can take it.
The reason why they went with DDR3 VS DDR5 is the fact that when they were doing the design work, there were serious questions about the availability of DDR5, whereas DDR3 was plentiful. They didn't want to design something that might be production limited. The PS4 on the other hand went with DDR5 and there seems to be enough, however if BOTH systems tried to use it in their production, there is a good chance that one or both systems would not be able to acquire enough DDR5 to meet production demands.
Microsoft offset this by making modifications to the AMD chip adding a small amount of really fast on chip memory to swap with, So while the over all bandwidth might not be the same, the difference is not solely connected to that one value. By all accounts I have seen there is very little real world difference, and likely in most cases there may be some games that are better or worse depending on which system configuration you use it in.
So no, it wasn't about RAM costs, but about RAM production availability, and in the end it doesn't really matter much either way. Perhaps down the road it might make some difference, but then again some speculate that later versions of the XBOX ONE may use DDR5 anyway once supply is established further making it a moot point.
Since no ones mentioned it yet Kerbal Space Program - a game that's so intellectual its literally for real rocket scientists. A game that can/will teach about real space travel far more effectively than just reading books or documentaries. Just try docking two ships, or even the first stage of putting a ship into orbit. :D)
And the best thing? is that once you get hooked its extremely addictive and compulsive.(I had one session where I played continuously for 56 hours..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Now that there is a console that comes with Kinect, the game developers of the world are working on games that will take advantage of it. When it was an optional peripheral, not much game development was aimed at Kinect because the market was too small.
Is it since downmods you applied cheating the moderation system will go away http://games.slashdot.org/comm... or is it since you're still eating your words after apk thrashed you http://yro.slashdot.org/commen... for libeling him then you ran away like a scared little girl for opening your mouth and inserting your foot while you ate your words seasoned with the bitter taste of self-defeat. You also called apk a loser that can't program here http://slashdot.org/comments.p... well it looks like you lost on all accounts since apk's program http://start64.com/index.php?o... he can show for himself against your libelous bullshit that works well and is hosted by members of the security community (malwarebytes hpHosts) and you have nothing to show for yourself like he does. You were reduced to name calling and using anoncoward sockpuppets to support you to me and projecting your own issues in being an uber loser.
Nobody is talking about the elephant in the room here.
Microsoft has not only cooperated with the NSA, but according to Snowden's leaks, has *eagerly* done so in ways that maximize what they're paid by the NSA. So why would I buy a Microsoft product with a camera on it? Why would I trust Microsoft with the data that it could potentially be used to collect?
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