Kinect is Officially Dead

"XBOX ONE is Kinect, we are not going to sell them separately." My how the times have changed.

Hey there everyone, Happy Gamer here, and it's official, Microsoft has stopped manufacturing the Kinect 2.0 for XBOX ONE. Microsoft has finally admitted that the Kinect was a mistake, and are no longer wasting their time with it. For those of you who forgot (and I don't blame you), the Kinect was a motion control device that allowed you to control games without a controller using cameras and infra-red. It would sense joints, articulation, and interpret it as control inputs; as well as various voice commands. Now I will admit, from a purely technological standpoint, it's pretty cool. It's kind of space age sci-fi. Buuuuuttttt...that didn't make it worth while.

First, a brief history. In 2006 Nintendo released a little console called "Wii." It used motion controls as it's native input, and aided by the pack-in title Wii Sports, it became the second best selling console in history. Microsoft seeing the popularity of the Wii, Microsoft decided to make their own motion control device for the XBOX 360 and in 2010 the Kinect was released. It received generally positive reviews with how innovative of technology it was, but it didn't really latch on to gamers. Despite their best efforts to make Kinect a thing, primarily through the use of Rare, Kinect for XBOX 360 never received that killer app that made everyone want buy one like Wii Sports did for the Wii. This lack of an install base made developers not want to develop for it in fear of their game not selling. Microsoft tried to remedy this by bundling a Kinect 2.0 with every XBOX ONE and integrating it's operating system to utilize the face recognition and voice commands, forcing an install base. Unfortunately this made the XBOX ONE $100 more expensive than the PS4 which didn't have a motion control camera and gave gamers the option as to if they wanted the motion controls or not. The requirement to always have it plugged in also really blew up in Microsoft's face as it made many gamers question why Microsoft would want to do that if not for spying on them. Eventually Microsoft reversed the requirement to always have it plugged in, but didn't sell a Kinectless bundle until about a year later. The downfall of the Kinect was further advanced when the XBOX ONE S didn't come with a port specifically for the Kinect. And on October 25th 2017 Microsoft officially stopped production of the Kinect 2.0. See ya later guys, DFTBA.

OK, so with my foot of a ferret rip-off complete, let's analyze what happened and why I saw this coming 3 years ago. Kinect just wasn't a good input device for videogames, plain and simple. I now have a 360 Kinect I got at gamestop for $20 to play star wars Kinect, and it just isn't good. It's not that the controls aren't responsive, or that you need to be far away from the TV (a luxury I don't really have), while those are problems, they could have fixed those and it still would be a turd. Motion controls are just not a good input for videogames. The Wii controller could be used like a conventional gamepad; not very easily with a lot of input options, but it could be done. But not the Kinect. Almost every Kinect game I know of was Kinect only. Even if you fix the unresponsive problem, holding your hand up to an option for 5 seconds to select the menu was tedious. If you want to play the whole "Kinect in tandem" card, I know it can be done. There was an XBOX 360 game that utilized Kinect for certain control inputs but not all (name escapes me at the moment), and I saw some gameplay. Rather cool, but rather tedious to control. I'd rather just have it mapped to a controller button. It just wasn't going to be a good idea, and forcing people to buy it wasn't going to make it successful.

OK, but what about all the other OS features? You know, turning on your xbox by saying "XBOX on" and automatic sign-in based on who's playing. Well...I've been using my xbox for a while now and I don't feel like I'm missing anything. Lets look at the different features: voice commands to turn on the XBOX and select games, using Cortana, automatic sign-in, QR code reader, and skype. I've never used Cortana, and I have no intention to ever start. I'm the only one that uses my XBOX ONE, there's only 1 profile on it (mine), and it signs me in automatically every time I turn it on. Skype? I don't use skype all that much after I graduated college. The only thing that really sort of interests me are the voice commands, and that's just because some things weren't that easy to use (clip recording comes to mind). However, Microsoft has made it much easier to use these features. Now I can record with just the press of 3 buttons, no longer do I have to suspend the game, open the app, and then record. The QR code reader is pretty useful, I'll admit, since entering a 12 digit code with a "hunt and peck" on-screen keyboard using my controller is a little tedious. But, I honestly don't buy enough digital content to really make an impact, plus, I tend to have a lot of trouble lining up the QR code with the little box, so I really don't know which would be easier.

"But the Wii was the 2nd best selling console because of the motion controls." Yes, because it was a good casual gaming device that came out before mobile gaming really took off. People bought Wii sports, and maybe Wii sports resort, because they were good casual games that were pick up and play in a time when there weren't really any casual games (aka, a killer app for the console). After the casual hype died out, the Wii was able to keep a player base with Nintendo exclusive games. Remember the Wii U and how it failed? Well, Nintendo was trying to live off the hype of the Wii, and failed. People just aren't interested anymore. Luckily, Microsoft had a pretty good base console to keep itself afloat. Well, this has been Happy Gamer, signing off, and looks like XBOX ONE ISN'T Kinect.