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Comment by VyseofArcadia | Hacker News Reader

You're glossing over a big part of the story.

It is hard, really, really hard, to convince game developers and publishers to make games that require an optional accessory. It's been tried again and again and it is never more than a mild success and usually an abject failure. They want to target the base platform, which will always have a dramatically larger install base.

Thr original Kinect was just such an optional accessory, and yeah, didn't have much in the way of third party support.

The XB1 could have, and would have, encouraged more devs to use and experiment with the Kinect because devs could be assured that every single user would have one hooked up.

Except that Microsoft chickened out instead of sticking to their guns. As usual.

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Microsoft chickened out because Sony was absolutely slaughtering them in sales by being $100 cheaper.

Granted price isn’t the only reason - MS’s self-inflicted bad PRs and slightly lower graphical performance of the XB1 - but it really wasn’t helping.

At the end of the day, their core demographic wasn’t interested in the gimmick that was the Kinect.

I hope they learned that lesson and now have at least 10% more power than Sony. It doesn’t really matter but early adopters drool about minor performance differences.

No, there is absolutely no way to integrate the Kinect into games in a meaningful way. Name just one example where it was done so that you would think "wow this has potential". Throwing grenades by gesture in call of duty? Biggest LOL ever. When I'm playing a competitive multiplayer title, I want precise, quick controls, and not let go of my controller to gesture around like a brain-damaged monkey.

With Kinect, you had to make a game that was entirely designed around it, and not have some random mix where you play with the controller and occasionally use gestures. And there really only are so many types of games you can come up with where it doesn't feel like you made something for the Kinect just for the sake of it..

I think the market tried quite a few things with Kinect on the 360, and the most convincing game to me was dance central, because it didn't entirely feel like a casual game with a bit of tech-demo scent, where you'd lose interest after a week and then maybe only ever pull it out again when you have friends over.

We'll never know because it was never really tried. With novel tech, there needs to be plenty of experimentation.

The market did not try quite a few things with Kinect. Most publishers put out a game, one single game, presumably subsidized by MS, and then went back to making games for the base console because there was not a Kinect install base.

> We'll never know because it was never really tried. With novel tech, there needs to be plenty of experimentation.

I call bs, the original Kinect was a commercial success and around for long enough. The tech was there, casual gamers were there, anyone could've picked it up and release an awesome AAA game with kinect to conquer the existing gaming audience. The price of the Kinect quickly dropped to 100$ after the initial price of 150$, which any serious gamer would've spent without hesitation. How is it Microsoft's fault that nobody did create such a killer app? Again, give me an example of anything that had at least potential. Or if you're that convinced it would've worked, you must have come up with your own ideas over the years, right?

> The market did not try quite a few things with Kinect.

Hit me.

It's the same vicious cycle as with the VR hype. In the end companies have to face the harsh reality that nobody really cares about their hyped up product and cut their losses.

Microsoft actually did try really hard with the Kinect (already in the Xbox 360 generation) but it just didn't work out. I wonder how much money they lost on that whole experiment (or maybe they actually made money, apparently they sold 35 million overall which isn't too shabby actually).

> Name just one example where it was done so that you would think "wow this has potential"

Dance Central 3 and Just Dance 2015 (?) were terrific.

Kinect was great for music/rhythm/dance games in general.

Now I want to go back and try Fruit Ninja, Kinect Adventures, and the Gunstringer.

I actually listed dance central in my comment! But I'd still consider that a casual game and nothing most hardcore gamers would be interested in. The thing it had going for it was that it kept you motivated for way longer than most other titles. Kinect adventures got boring quite fast, and like most other titles turned into that fun game for small casual evenings with a couple friends over.

Force-bundling it with the Xbox one enraged the (hard)core gamers as they had to pay for an addon that the last few years showed they have no need for, and for the casual gamer, it was too expensive. It had success with casual gamers on the 360 because that console was already relatively old and thus affordable when the Kinect appeared.

microsoft had the potential with Kinect to tie it into xbox live or something + Skype. In my opinion, they had an epic opportunity to have a great video call solution and they blew it.

> The original Kinect was just such an optional accessory...

The Xbox One was then tightly integrated with the Kinect, but that was such an unpopular move that they eventually gave up (first by no longer requiring the Kinect to be connected [1], then by no longer shipping a Kinect with each Xbox [2]) - so it's not for lack of trying. The thing was just unpopular with Xbox users.

...also as an Xbox 360 user at that time I saw Kinect as an expensive toy, and the completely brainless Xbox One marketing (which made very obvious that I'm not their target audience) was one of the main reasons why I gave up on the Xbox and went back to PC gaming.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/12/4615586/xbox-one-no-longe...

[2] https://kotaku.com/microsoft-announces-xbox-one-without-kine...

From the first article,

> Microsoft is making another Xbox One policy change by allowing gamers to use the upcoming console without Kinect.

> upcoming

They did not try. There was no trying. It was not eventual. They folded before it ever came to market.

And the thing already had worse performance than the PS4, so dropping the Kinect really meant just having an inferior product with no product differentiation.

The second article shows though that they had bundled Kinect with each Xbox One for about half a year before giving up (I guess they really got thrashed hard by PS4 sales and went into panic mode).

The thing is simply that Kinect made the Xbox One more expensive than a PS4, and that for a piece of hardware that most Xbox users saw at best as a gimmick. It probably was the first sane decision of the bungled Xbox One launch.

That's not how you bring in adoption or sell products. They should have build something amazing using Kinect that everyone would have wanted one and not cared about buying it separately. Then if everyone had one then devs would have come. But they themselves did not have some amazing use for it.

That's naïve. No matter how amazing your launch game is, a large fraction of your install base will just never bother. Maybe they don't have the money, or they're just frugal. Maybe they're skeptical and reluctant to upgrade. Maybe they just don't like whatever genre of game.

It has been tried again and again and again. Optional console accessories and upgrades just never have enough of an install base to attract a critical mass of devs.

Nintendo sells consoles with great experiences let alone accessories

Outside of a few specific games that went all-in, I remember the Wii & Wii U game ecosystem as largely ignoring the wiimote and the gamepad in favor of standard controls.

Going further back in time, I remember the GameCube/n64 and gameboy game-relevant accessories as largely being limited to a few games each, and always as an optional bonus feature that never really mattered that much

Kinect GEL Ride "I WONDER IF THIS GAME HAS AUTO-STEERING. WHAT DO YOU THINK?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo

You are free to pay $100 for gimmicks all you want.

IIRC, the Kinect was supposed to be an integral part of the XB1 package, but was made optional to compete (price-wise) with the PlayStation 4. Pretty unfortunate.

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