Could Kinect be Microsoft's iPod? | Hacker News Reader

Could Kinect be Microsoft's iPod?

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31 pointsrkwz36 comments

My nephew got it for Christmas. I was bowled over by it. Surprised at how unfit I am, my arms hurt for two days after the Boxing game in the Sports bundle!

I heard that were issues with it but it worked fine for us, in a couple of different rooms with adults and kids of 6 and 7 :)

Very very cool to be able to manipulate an interface at a distance and considering that this is v1.0 then I think it is safe to assume that Microsoft will iron out any glitches and improve it as the iterate through the versions.

I'm a Linux and Mac guy but I gotta say that Kinect is superb and they deserve every credit for being innovative here.

Same here. Friend of ours brought their Kinect over to unbox. We played Dance Central out of the box in under 60 second flat. My wife and I have never been able to enjoy a game that much, at the same time, in ages. Needless to say we bought one a day after that.

After playing with Kinect a bit, I bought Halo: Reach. Same story, it worked, it was good, and I was impressed. Then I saw there were games available for download, like Burnout: Revenge -- but with 720p graphic updates.

I think Microsoft has and will sell a ton of Kinect bundles both this Christmas and in the months to come. Once you play with one, you have to have it. Once you have it, you'll buy games for it. Its a very "hook, line and sinker" approach that is working.

Heck, I saw at least 3 families in Best Buy after New Year's picking up Kinect bundles. For a $3-400 purchase in this economy, where I live, that's something.

Boxing killed me, but I also destroyed my entire family, included my cousins for whom it was bought. I too was incredibly impressed, and found it to be one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a long time. Now they just have to do something with it that Nintendo didn't do four years ago.

Historically Microsoft has also been quite successful mostly copying competitors' ideas.

If they just make a better Wii, that would be fine with me.

My 10-year-old nephew trounced me :( Heh

I don't get what you mean by the Nintendo thing ...

I actually think there's quite a bit of potential for the Kinect, but it's really hampered by one giant bug:

It's an xbox.

The whole experience still screams "I'm a hardcore game device". Hell, it's called an "XBOX" for crying out loud. That doesn't sound warm and fuzzy. When you unbox it, you still need to use the xbox controller with it's intimidating array of input buttons, pads, triggers, and sticks. Most people are going to be scared and intimidated by that.

If you power it up, you're going to be confused by xbox live. You're going to be confused by how many accounts you need to create. You're going to be confused by the number of options.

You're going to be intimidated by ads for Call Of Duty.

You're going to be confused what is an arcade game and what is a demo.

In short, as much polish there is on the Kinect, it can't overcome the fact that it's a bolt-on product for an Xbox. If it was a brand-new, $199 device it would fly off the shelves. What it needs is a 60 second demo: when you have a friend over, you need to be able to turn on the device and be playing Kinect 60 seconds later without ever seeing the xbox controller.

Recently got a friend a Kinect for his birthday... turns out you can hit the 60 second mark pretty easily. His mom loved it, and was playing it all the time. Dance Central, in particular, was a hit, as well as the included-in-the-box Dance Central.

Actually it hits the 60 second mark pretty easily. I got our family our very first console this Christmas, the XBox Kinect bundle. Our usage is: turn it on, insert disk, play game.

It's really not that hard.

You really think people are stupid and everything should be sold in heart shaped plush pillows, right?

People aren't stupid, they're lazy. They expect things to just work out of the box. They don't want to create online accounts,they don't look through the setup menus and they certainly don't read the manual.

I think the point is that Kinect is only part of the package. Nintendo delivered the full thing with the Wii: a friendly, non-gaming-related name and brand, accessibility with the Wii Remote from the first minute you turn it on, a low price point, what they call "bridge" games (games designed to get hardcore and casual playing together, like Mario Kart - unsurprisingly, Mario Kart outsold and continues to outsell games like Wii Fit), etc. Kinect just provides casual games and a UI for those games.

There needs to be more, and hopefully Microsoft will grow in that direction. Obviously their decision right now was to spur the growth and sales of the Xbox brand for the next few years by releasing Kinect as an addon instead of a separate device, but there was a lot of wisdom in Nintendo's move away from the "Nintendo" people associate with 80's videogames and Super Mario.

I agree, I think they should bundle it with a cut-down xbox and simplify the UX.

Yep. Very excited for the platform.

Microsoft is finally succeeding in its quest to dominate the living room. Remember the pre-launch buzz of Project Natal? With this controller, they made all consoles of this generation obsolete.

With future software updates, we will likely see the gaming functionality become less prominent. The box may default to Media Center experience based on user identity.

Microsoft knows what works for Apple and how intuitive UX is essential to its success.

Seems really unlikely since the problems it solves are not nearly so universal as those of the iPod, iPhone, or Mac.

What problem does Mac exactly solve?

The lack of high quality, attractive, easy to use computers made by anyone else.

Providing a commercially supported, UNIX-like platform.

I got nothing..

I'm skeptical of any complicated human interface device that doesn't provide feedback / resistance. For me, the lack of feedback is what made the Wiimote feel like a gimmick and I think it'll limit how game developers are able to succeed with Kinect.

The wiimote did alright. You may be an anomaly.

No doubt you are part of a consumer segment that do not like the Wiimote and Kinect. The question is how big is your segment and what percentage of gamers the segment is. These two numbers will tell us whether there is a market opportunity for another device or this segment can be safely ignored.

Gimmick?

I think calling Wiimote/Kinect a gimmick shows lack of imagination.

Motion-based UI opens a lot of possibilities that will extend beyond gaming.

You're so right, the Wii was totally a gimmick. How did it ever become a huge success for years now? Kinect must also be a gimmick, a break out successful gimmick.

Unless people are able to walk around the city to show friends (or anyone who would listen) how cool they are with their Kinect, it won't be Microsoft's iPod.

Or the XBox was already Microsoft's iPod.

For MS to capitalise on the Kinetic's success they need to start releasing good official drivers for Windows soon so they can channel the wave of developer activity onto their main platform. At the moment it seems like you are better off using Linux or Mac with the hacked drivers. I don't think there is time to wait for some 'kinect integrated' version of windows but they could also start working on that. It will be interesting to see if they are if they are nimble enough to react to an unexpected level of success like this.

FWIW, my girlfriend doesn't like playing Wii and absolutely dislikes hardcore games, but she was blown away by kinect's demo videos--especially the dancing ones and said she'd definitely get a kinect if within her budget at some point.

Anecdote aside, Microsoft really has to open up the platform as much as possible and embrace developer inovations. If they do this, they'll finally take over the living room. I have a feeling the media center division needs to get out of the way almost entirely for this to happen, also.

Asus is coming out with their own version of the Kinect made by the same people who engineered part of the Kinect for Microsoft. So Kinect won't be the only game in town.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/03/primesense-and-asus-team-...

I do INDEED think Kinect could be Microsoft's iPod. I tried the kinect at my friends house the other day, and it already kicks nintendo's Wii ass totally. And Microsoft's choice to leave it open for 3rd party hacking, I think, is going to get a bigger crowd by letting people make more use of it.

They didn't leave it open on purpose? Why do you think so? They even threatened legal action when the Kinect first came out and a company offered a bounty for OSS drivers. They'll likely never do anything about it, but they're not opening it up.

No. Kinect is Microsoft's :Cue:Cat.

A nifty-looking gadget that's perfectly useless in its manufacturer's intended use, but gained new life once the hackers tore it apart and started doing stuff with it.

My parents like the Kinect. They bought an Xbox just to play the Kinect. They like Kinect to play racing games on the Xbox. I use a controller to play Halo. Different audiences, different appeal.

I don't see the UX-potential of the Kinect porting to the PC anytime soon. Call me stuck in my ways but I think the mouse and keyboard is pretty effective. Maybe focus-follows-eyeball would be cool, and Compiz's head tracking plugin gives windows some floating perspective, but I don't know if these things are major shifts in the Desktop paradigm or big enough to be iPod-cool.

Kinect is part of an imaginary market along with its brethren the Wiimote and PlayStation Move.

Hardcore gamers soon realize that jumping up and down is nowhere near as fun as sitting on a couch and pushing buttons. Casual users, while initially sold on the health benefits, soon lose interest as well.

Hardcore gamers play games a lot more frequently than casual gamers.

Casual gamers still spend money on games though. And there are a lot of them. Almost as many Wiis have been sold as the population of Germany. Nobody in the game console business would be sane to write off such a large market.

Once the devices are purchased, there is no market. While purely anecdotal, I have not seen any friends or family actually using a Wii in a long time.

If anybody has marketing data to the contrary, I would be interested in seeing it.

What you are looking for is called the attach-rate. Basically how much other stuff in the ecosystem are people buying once they have the console. I believe the XBOX is leading the pack for attach rate with both games and accessories, which is huge as that's where the big money is.

That really is anecdotal. Amongst casual gamers (The massive market) wii games sell like hotcakes. Tons of fantastic titles.

They are different kinds of markets.

On the one hand you have people who buy a console, buy several games a year, and play games often (several times a month).

On the other hand you have people who buy a console, buy a few games very rarely (maybe not even one per year), and only play games perhaps a few times a year.

If all things were equal then it would be vastly better to cater to the first variety of customer than the second. But things are not equal. There are more of the second kind of customer than the first, seemingly by a large margin. Also, the second kind of customer tends to buy games that are much cheaper to develop.

Overall that adds up to a huge, lucrative, ongoing market for casual gamers.

Wii Fit sold 22 million copies. That's a $90 game including a high markup peripheral. In contrast, Halo: Reach and Modern Warfare 2 have sold fewer than 10 million copies. How much do you think it cost to develop Wii Fit vs. Halo: Reach?

You can write off the casual gamer market all you like but the fact is that the people like Nintendo and the Kinect group who are catering to them will be laughing at you while they are doing backstrokes in their giant money bins.

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