Kinect Discussion

[GamerMan316]

So my advice to the world ... DON'T PREORDER KINECT!   

I was just about to pre-order it too 

[GamerMan316]

MS: We'll do Kinect FPS 'someday'

[GamerMan316]

Charlie Brooker on Kinect.

Why talk to a computer? Surely talking to a human is traumatic enough?
The technology behind Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox should seem impossibly magical, but I see only drawbacks



About 10 minutes into the 21st century it became a cliche to complain that all those old Hollywood dreams of spending the year 2000 zipping about on jetpacks and playing moon golf with robots were wild works of fiction after all. Now, 10 years on, the present is actually overtaking those movies. And it needn't have bothered.

Everyone remembers how astounded they were by the Nintendo Wii, right? You wave a stick around your living room and pretend you're playing tennis. Well at last week's E3 Expo in Los Angeles, Microsoft launched something called Kinect for the Xbox, which takes things one step further. Suddenly there is no stick. There's just you. You are the stick. Except they prefer to say, "You are the controller," because "stick" sounds a bit demeaning.

There's no pesky handheld interface at all with Kinect. You simply stand in front of your television sweeping your arms about like an unemployed conductor having a breakdown in front of daytime television, and the game reacts to your movements. It actually manages to make Minority Report look dated. Tom Cruise had to don special gloves to use his hand-waggling computer interface. Loser. What is this, 1976? Kinect lets you ride bareback.

And it doesn't just notice your hands, but your entire body. The most promising application was Dance Central, a dancing game from the creators of Guitar Hero. There have been dancing games before, of course, but they were rudimentary hopscotch affairs where you had to step on the right footpad at the right time. Dance Central tracks what your shoulders are doing and encourages you to correct your hips – just like the morning exercise routine Winston Smith had to perform in front of his telescreen in 1984, but with a Lady Gaga soundtrack and slightly less emphasis on dictatorial hectoring.

But wait: Kinect has ears as well as eyes. So as well as jigging around to impress in-game characters who aren't really there, you can also converse with them, thus enabling you to enjoy all the fun of a full-blown psychotic hallucination without feeling compelled to go out and stab someone afterwards. Unless that's the purpose of the game, of course, which it probably isn't, given the bad press that'd generate.

Instead it all looks rather twee: another centrepiece is Kinectimals, a virtual pet simulator which lets children play with cuddly imaginary tiger cubs and the like. You can talk to the tiger cub, tickle it under the chin, dance for its amusement, or hide behind the sofa and watch it whimper morosely until you jump back into view. You can do virtually anything with the cuddly not-there critter, apart from taking the only sane course of action: screaming "BEGONE, VILE WRAITH!" while stamping on its head. If you try that it'll just stare at you, blinking vacantly every 2.3 seconds as prescribed by its software, until you admit defeat and crumple weeping to the carpet – at which point it'll detect your despair and do a funny little handstand to cheer you up, and you'll catch sight of it and momentarily smile through your tears despite yourself and THUS KINECTIMAL IS THE VICTOR.

The technology behind Kinect should seem impossibly magical. A computer you can talk to, a computer that responds to your facial expression and tone of voice? So you're basically like Captain Wow issuing commands to his Plutobot 2000? The teenage me would've kicked himself in the balls with excitement. But now I'm so used to being dazzled by the white heat of technology, my eyes have grown accustomed to the glare. No longer blinded by progress, I see only drawbacks.

As Charles Arthur remarked in this paper last week, much of this technology only comes about about because of the "Star Trek effect" that turns sci-fi movies into self-fulfilling prophesies. A scientist sees a sliding door on the USS Enterprise, gets excited, tries to recreate one in reality, and before you know it you can't even enter your local Tesco without passing through at least two of the bastards. This phenomenon also explains the invention of Laser Quest, the iPad and Soylent Green flavour Pringles.

But movies often do things that work better in movies than in real life. Take talking to computers. The Kinect demonstration showed a man saying "Xbox, play movie" in order to make his Xbox play an HD digital copy of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. Then he said "Xbox, pause", and the Xbox paused it. Then he said "How cool is that?" and the audience took a while to respond, because there's no polite collective noise that means: "We appreciate the ingenuity, but CHRIST you look like a dick."

We've got buttons now. Buttons. If you want to play a movie, there's a button right there. You don't have to plead with it. Just press it. Shut up and press it.

Movies show people talking to machines for the same reason they'll still show the whistleblower turning up on the hero's doorstep to deliver urgent news in person, rather than sending a text: because it's more dramatic. It's also more cumbersome. Dancing software that rates your performance and turns exercise into a brightly coloured game: that's a step forward. Holding dorky conversations with your Xbox: that's a leap backward. Or to put it another way: no matter how far into the future we run, we're always lagging slightly behind.

[DFUSIONITE]

The guy is a dick. I have watched his shows and he isn't even funny. He just says things for effect, supposedly comedic. I disagree entirely with him, no matter what he says about anything  he is just another journalist who sits on his oh so high horse and finds fault with everything so people think he is more intelligent than he actually his. Other than that he is a nice guy 

[Astrex]

The guy is a Wanker. I have watched his shows and he isn't even funny. He just says things for effect, supposedly comedic. I disagree entirely with him, no matter what he says about anything  he is just another journalist who sits on his oh so high horse and finds fault with everything so people think he is more intelligent than he actually his. Other than that he is a nice guy 

Fixed 

[GamerMan316]

Charlie Brooker is awesome, great writer, very funny and seems to echo a lot of my thoughts, he's also an avid gamer so his opinions carry far more weight than the usual journalist crap we have to put up with, top man.

[DFUSIONITE]

Charlie Brooker is awesome, great writer, very funny and seems to echo a lot of my thoughts, he's also an avid gamer so his opinions carry far more weight than the usual journalist crap we have to put up with, top man.

LOL. I know you like him thats why i wrote what i did  I do disagree with his kinect comments though, but then again i am a kinect fan boy 

[GamerMan316]

Charlie Brooker is awesome, great writer, very funny and seems to echo a lot of my thoughts, he's also an avid gamer so his opinions carry far more weight than the usual journalist crap we have to put up with, top man.

LOL. I know you like him thats why i wrote what i did  I do disagree with his kinect comments though, but then again i am a kinect fan boy 

Can't say i've noticed 

[GamerMan316]

Game and HMV to demo Kinect in stores
You'll be able to play before you buy

GAME and HMV have confirmed that they'll have in-store Kinect demos where punters can try Microsoft's new interface for themselves.

"The key to Kinect and to getting customers is obviously all about demonstration," Neil Ashurst, Head of UK PR for Game told TechRadar.

"So at the moment our focus is looking at ways of doing that. Beyond that we don't have any specific details at present."

The news comes after Microsoft announced it would have Kinect on display at its handful of retail stores in the US.



I can hardly contain my excitement.

[nCogNeato]

Charlie Brooker on Kinect.

Why talk to a computer? Surely talking to a human is traumatic enough?

... you can also converse with them, thus enabling you to enjoy all the fun of a full-blown psychotic hallucination

I laughed at that.   

[Failed]

It actually manages to make Minority Report look dated. Tom Cruise had to don special gloves to use his hand-waggling computer interface. Loser. What is this, 1976? Kinect lets you ride bareback.

Heehee!!

[GamerMan316]

Justin Bieber advertising Kinect on tour


Oh joy!

[GamerMan316]

Molyneux fancies Kinect Black & White

Lionhead's Peter Molyneux has said that he loves the idea of a version of his PC god game Black & White for Xbox 360 motion controller Kinect, but it's unlikely he'll have time.

The two Black & White games featured a gesture interface that allowed you to cast spells, interact with your giant creature and manage your worshippers' settlements, so the series is an obvious fit for Microsoft's camera device, he reasoned.

"The original Black & White - with the hand, reaching in and touching and stroking, you can really factor that with Kinect, and it could be really super cool," Molyneux mused to UGO.

"It's purely me just thinking about it, and thinking about what Black & White means. I love the idea of that connection the hand gave you into the world, the feeling of power, the feeling of nuturing."

But although he said "maybe it is something I should revisit," Molyneux confessed that there was too much on his plate to entertain the idea right now.

"The trouble with being a designer now is that there are way too many ideas than there is time to develop those ideas," he said.

"I would love to do something like a Black & White again. I would love to do a Fable 4. I would love to carry on doing Milo, but there is only a certain amount of resources and a certain amount of time."

[GamerMan316]

Diskinected

[nCogNeato]

Just give me voice commands and easy hand-motion menu navigation (while sitting down) and that is well worth my $100.

I don't expect any 'killer apps' until at least a year after launch.