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Comment by dinedal | Hacker News Reader

Nintendo didn't say or do anything, and now everyone and their brother can hook up a Wiimote to a computer and use it without issue. It doesn't seem to have negatively impacted them at all.

I'm curious as to why MS thinks that this is going to hurt them.

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What's ironic is that Microsoft recruited a high-profile Wii hacker to work on Kinect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/12/johnny-chung-lee-joins-pr...

If I'm not mistaken he was already a microsoft research engineer

He was still at CMU when he was hacking Wii-motes: http://johnnylee.net/projects/

he also pioneered perhaps projection mapping

The Kinect hardware might be a loss leader for Microsoft licensed software.

That's also probably true of Nintendo. I doubt the hardware has anywhere close to the revenue margins of the games themselves, or licensing games.

I think the real point in the original comment was that "serious" business is unlikely to build products competing with 360 on other platforms based on an open source driver for Kinect. E.g. Activision are extremely unlikely to build video games for PC based that require a Kinect.

While there might be a small cost to Microsoft in selling a few Kinect bundles to hackers who don't have, and therefore buy games for, XBox 360 in the grand scheme of things it's hardly a threat to Mircosoft's new business model and this is just the standard corporate answer to anyone tampering with their products.

It's Microsoft's prerogative to make business decisions for itself. They don't have to rationalize them against the C.W. of hacker forums.

Nobody's saying it isn't their right. But, it's also my right to criticize their decision as being irrational, mean-spirited, or whatever. I do question whether Microsoft should have a "right" under the DMCA to prevent me from reverse engineering their protocols though. However, that's not an argument specific to any one product encumbered with anti-circumvention schemes.

I agree (up to the point where people try to start businesses based on circumvention techniques), but note that Microsoft actually doesn't have the right under DMCA to stop people from researching ways to break Kinect.

I for one would be delighted if someone were to start a business making the razors-and-razorblades business model untenable.

It's anticompetitive, distortionary, harms interoperability, and tempts businesses into spending endless amounts of money in an arms race that could better be spent making their products better.

That's just branding. There hasn't been consumer noticeable technological advancement in that market in probably 20 years or more. Honestly, is 10 blades going to increase my quality of life?

I'm an entrepreneur. I work in a field notorious for generating a feeling of entitlement among laypeople.

So, I have a hard time sympathizing with arguments that boil down to "if company X makes cool peripheral Y, I am entitled to use it in way Z that is contrary to X's business interests".

My unfounded suspicion is that if the tables were turned, and Microsoft focused its (considerable!) systems research capabilities on, say, disrupting Wattvision's business model, Hacker News wouldn't be leaping to the defense of forced interoperability.

"if company X makes cool peripheral Y, I am entitled to use it in way Z that is contrary to X's business interests".

Er, yes? Claiming the opposite eviscerates property rights even more than the DMCA already does.

Barring antitrust issues I have no legal or moral issues with that.

You see the right to do whatever you want with any physical object you exchange money to possess.

I see the right to design, build, and offer a product to the market under whatever terms I'd like.

These rights are in conflict, and I see that, but let's not pretend that there's no other side to this.

Sure, there's another side to this, but it's not a valid side. Your side merely capitalizes on the present legal murkiness of the software/copyright issue. Console manufacturers, phone manufacturers, and a legion of other device manufacturers have spent three decades capitalizing on abuses of patent and copyright law.

Patents exist not to lock out competition or allow total control over an invention, but as a method for making sure your work isn't stolen (for a limited time) and thus give you a commercial incentive to innovate. It is outright abuse to say that it gives anyone the right to dictate how devices are used, but is sadly an abuse that has become the status quo.

You write as if Microsoft discovered the Kinect, maybe deep inside some ancient system of caves, and now is hoarding them for their own nefarious purposes.

There are certainly markets where it basically isn't possible to make a living pricing things at marginal cost, which is why we have copyright law. There are also markets with large sunk research costs (i.e. the Kinect) where there needs to be a mechanism to recoup them, which is why we have patent law.

So I'm not particularly sympathetic to people feel like they shouldn't have to pay for a copy of something just because the marginal cost is zero. Leaving aside details like perpetual copyrights on the installment plan, we have a decent legal framework that only works if everyone contributes (cf. taxes).

But game consoles, to borrow your phrasing, are a field notorious for generating a feeling of entitlement among corporations. Same with printer cartridges, mobile phones, and, yes, razorblades. There is no societal need for these pricing schemes when we have an efficient consumer credit market, and they're frankly anticompetitive.

Society benefits from competitive markets, and competitive markets work best when things are forced to be priced at what they're worth. So I would argue that society benefits when loss-leader schemes are rendered infeasible.

This is not true with Nintendo. They're anti-loss leader. Their philosophy calls for them to turn a profit on everything they do. Here's a quick blurb about it:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2006/09/7752.ars

Not to be too pedantic, but I deliberately choose my wording. I didn't say Nintendo made a loss on the hardware I said it likely has worse profit margins than selling games on their platform.

Selling hardware may not actually hurt them, but it obviously their goal is to create a platform on which to upsell games.

It's rumored that it costs $150 for Microsoft to make a Kinect.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/35198/Source-pins-Kinect-...

How can 2x low-res low-framerate webcams cost $150 when I can buy as many as I want new, shipped for $6 apiece?

Probably because it isn't just a webcam. It projects hundreds of IR dots all over its field of vision to help calculate depth.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/11/04/what-kinect-looks-like-...

I didn't say it was just a webcam. I said it should cost in the ballpark of 2x of them. Adding a $1 LED with hundreds of little holes in front of it doesn't change that.

Note: I'm not making any statement about the possible awesomeness or lameness of the system. All I'm saying is the parts aren't expensive.

Even if so, unless someone comes out with a fantastic hack that goes completely mainstream- the potential damage is low. Most people who buy one will also buy the games.

I can't recall where or when I read it, but there was some talk that Kinect might also be used in an office setting. Microsoft may well be thinking about it and having an open source driver going around might cut into their plans they could have for Kinect.

Edit:

Kinect is part of Microsoft’s continuing quest to bring to market natural user interface (NUI) technologies, like touch, voice and gesture-recognition. Maybe it’s also part of a grand plan to force users to continue to exercise (even if that just means by waving a hand) while being increasingly tied to our PCs?

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-kinect-for-gam...

You'd still have to buy the Kinect. And, I'd think, having useful Kinect-compatible software from other sources increases the value offered by the device, compared with what it would be if only Microsoft's software used it.

Microsoft probably wants to continue with the razors & razorblades model of the XBox. So, maybe it wants to extract a toll from 3rd parties who produce products for the platform. No different really than the iPhone.

I don't necessarily agree with DMCA restrictions on reverse engineering, but I do support Microsoft's right to sell a closed platform.

I just can't see myself flapping my arms to lower a projector or jumping up and down to mute a microphone.

On the other hand, how cool would it be to wave your hand in front of your computer to mute it, or to flip through slides by moving your hands back and forth? Think less full-body motions and more simply tracking the position of hands, allowing for touch-screen like interactions without actually needing to touch the screen. There are lots of things I can see this being really useful for (especially 3d modeling; I recently saw an article about an iPad program which lets you model as if you were working with clay, and I would love to have something like that for my PC).

Waving with my hands will be so much easier then pressing the Down key? All the applications you name really depend on how accurate the Kinect really turns out to be.

Back on the first hand, how frustrating would it be to have the Kinect changing slides for you every time you gesture at the screen?

In general, though, yes, I think there is a lot of room for improvement in the technology that supports presenters (but that's still no reason not to practice and get comfortable with the tech you have)

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