Kinect is a "particular focus" for Unity on Xbox One - "it's just an amazing piece of hardware"

OXM:We've been chatting to Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason about how the company's mind-bogglingly popular Unity engine will work on Xbox One. He's not in a position to share everything about the partnership with Microsoft right now, but you can expect more news "soon" - at Gamescom next week, perhaps?

[NeverEnding1989]

Wasn't a big fan of Kinect, but Kinect 2.0 is shaping up to be a beast of a technology. Can't wait to see what devs like Insomniac and Quantic Dream can do with it a few years into X1's lifecycle.

[-Mika-]

I agree. Alot of people on here bash it but the kinect 2 is an amazing device. It will make the XB1 stand out and once again give ms MS the mainstream appeal.

[Neonridr]

huh.. I always pegged you for a Sony fan Mika.

[No_Limit]

Mika is one of the most neutral member on N4G. You will never see her trolling on any news article and all her comments are spot on most of the time.

LOL, just because she has a FF avatar doesn't mean she is a fan of a particular brand. If it is a Kaz avatar, then that is another ballgame.

[KonsoruMasuta]

Lo At Mika begin neutral and not troll.

No_Limit, you have no idea what you're talking about.

[HammadTheBeast]

You guys are idiots for being trolled by Mika like this.

Whatever he/she says is the opposite. I'm surprised Mika magically got 3 bubs.

[killcole]

@Neonridr no Sony fan could only have 3 bubbles.

[Master-H]

Mika is a special kind of troll. she/he doesn't care about a particular brand, she/he just likes to piss people off, usually by leaving some dumb comment that pisses off people , but she/he puts it in certain words so it seems like a real opinion, so she doesn't get de-bubbled easily , in essence Mika is sort of a stealth troll, a rare breed indeed LoL

[Timesplitter14]

I think Kinect 2 has much higher chances to succeed, and it's not mainly because the technology improved. It's because it comes bundled with every XOne.

With Kinect 1, most devs must've thought that it wasn't worth doing anything serious with Kinect because nobody had one. But now, knowing that all Xone users will have access to Kinect features, devs can safely experiment with it

[JokesOnYou]

^^^^This.

[HugoDrax]

I wasn't a big fan either, besides voice controls for Mass Effect 3 and hooking the KINECT up to my MacBook Pro and mapping it into the computer. Other than that, I wasn't a fan of the build quality of KINECT 1 either. Although, the build quality and features seem to be more improved for KINECT 2.

[AngelicIceDiamond]

@ending Quantic Dream? Did I miss something?

[Bigpappy]

"Secret sauce". It is about to get interesting. Sony has their camera in their back pocket. I can't wait to see what they have up their sleeves. They have been letting M$ go first since the reveal and countering.

I know they now have a much better camera, but just how capable is it? The casual market can not be ignored.

[Thomper]

I think Sony's camera will remain in it's back pocket tbh. They took a gamble, heard the feedback on kinect and decided to remove it from the box and make it an option. This is just my view, of course.

The two units are not even comparable, Sony's offering probably can't even touch kinect v1.

I am really looking forward to playing with Kinect. I love gadgets and shit, so why wouldn't I be interested?

[Animal Mutha 76]

Sonys camera is a me too afterthought. In fact you mentioning it is the first time I've heard it mentioned in ages.

It seems to have fallen off the radar. Sony sacrificed it to get a cost advantage in my opinion.

They are not shouting about the camera at all. I wonder why. Having it bundled with the system would have been smarter.

[Anon1974]

I can't say anything about Kinect 2.0, but I had the chance to work on a proof of concept training program as the project lead using Unity and Kinect. It was a nightmare. Kinect was just a horrible, unreliable beast to use with the sdk at the time. It was always losing focus on the main subject or would simply refuse to recognize that person if they even had a lose fitting t-shirt on. We'd have to recalibrate Kinect multiple times per session, every time. In the end, our client was intrigued with what we produced but decided to go a different route and I was left with a pretty negative opinion of what the tech, even working correctly, would be capable of. I've seen nothing so far to make me change that opinion.

Dance and exercise games are about the only things I think that can utilize this tech. Perhaps I'm just unimaginative, but those are the really the only practical applications for Kinect that I can see. Even the cool little hacks I've seen are nothing that haven't been done with ordinary cameras.

Frankly I'm baffled why Microsoft is pushing this on everyone again considering the initial novelty of has long since wore off. Not that they've shown much yet of what they plan on doing differently with Kinect 2. I'll reserve my final judgement until I've seen what they put out. It's great that it can read your mood, map your skeleton better etc, but if it's just used for another Star Wars dance game, what's the point?

I'm just as skeptical about the uses for the new PS Eye.

[Saddam_hussein]

What's even weirder, is what a hardcore Sony fanboy you usually are. But that wouldn't sway your opinion right?

[nirwanda]

How about use the the occulas rift, or object scanning with dead rising so you can use your household objects as new weapons.
Tennis or golf with real clubs or rackets.

[Anon1974]

Wow, Saddam_hussein! You just totally destroyed my comments with that well thought out insight. Oh, wait a minute. You addressed nothing I said. You can usually tell when someone has no counter point when their first response is to resort to name calling. I was just sharing my experience with Unity and the old Kinect hardware from the perspective of someone who worked with it in the past. You think I'm the only one who worked on Kinect that had reservations about it's ultimate usefulness? I guess we're all hardcore Sony fans, which explains why we were working on Kinect, doesn't it now?

It doesn't matter what the new Kinect can do, if they can't find new uses for the tech other than making more dance games. Same goes for the PS Eye. Can you honestly say with Kinect there was one, killer experience that was so unique it justified owning the hardware? It's an honest question and I'd love to hear a well thought out response. If not, what makes you think Kinect 2 will be any different?

The only thing I saw that seemed a unique, worthy use of Kinect was that Sesame Street game Double Fine put out, which I would have snatched up for my kids if I had the space to properly setup Kinect. But did the game even sell half a million? Are there any chances of seeing more titles like that? I simply don't know.

[nirwanda]

What they need is a split controller you can hold in each hand so you can do things the kinect is rubbish at like moving a camera and moving around.

[Bigpappy]

Darkride, I understand the limitations of the first Kinect. But what I do not understand is how that is relevant to this new Kinect. That would be like me going to a PS4 article and saying that I got a PS1 and hooked it up to my HDTV for my kids to play, and they all left me in the room alone to go play a wii.

It is just not relevant to the new Kinect. Your only relavent comment was " I'll reserve my final judgement until I've seen what they put out".

[Anon1974]

How are the experiences of past development using Kinect and Unity not relevant? Of course they're relevant. They're what the new Kinect are based on, and these experiences are going to color the opinions of every developer looking at picking up the Kinect 2 to develop on. How could they not?

If you bought a Honda Civic and had a horrible experience with it, are you telling me that when I new Civic comes out these past experiences aren't going influence your opinion of the new product? Are you some robot that can just brain wipe yourself into forgetting all previous memories when a new product becomes available?

We're not talking about decades between hardware revisions here. We're talking about a new product that appears to be a slight revision of the old. I witnessed devs today in the forums talking about having used both Kinect devices discussing issues that haven't been resolved yet.

My point was the previous hardware (and software) had issues, and it's usage was somewhat limited to only a couple of genres. What's changed? The hardware may be a bit better. What about the SDK? Does it suddenly, magically lend itself to new genres that it was never able to lend itself to before? The Kinect 2 isn't something that's been redesigned from the ground up. It's still very much a Kinect with a few new tweaks.

Only by learning from the past can we avoid making the same mistakes again in the future. I mean, for christ's sake, the article says that users will be able to export their 360 unity work over to the Xbox One. They say right in the article that the past development will carry forward. Of course it's relevant.

[n4rc]

@dark ride

Actually... Its a completely different product.. Its name is then only thing it shares with the old kinrct..

Using the car reference.. Its like a redesign of the model.. Just because it drives and shares a name doesn't mean it can't be a totally different car

[Anon1974]

I'm not saying it can't be different. I'm saying that perceptions of the old product can have ramifications on the new.

And hearing from developers who've had hands on with the new Kinect camera, it sounds like while the Kinect 2 is doing everything the Kinect did a bit better, that's one of it's problems. It's not doing anything particularly new compared to Kinect. It's what Kinect should have been, but doesn't appear to be anything more.

At any rate, I can see I'm not talking to a particularly open minded bunch here so I'm not going to pursue this matter further. Time will tell if Kinect 2 is able to set itself apart from it's predecessor. I just have some doubts. But then I doubted Kinect would take off at all and I was dead ass wrong about that so who knows what's going to happen.

[n4rc]

People aren't open minded because they don t agree with you? Leaving that one alone..

And really? I keep reading about awesome uses for it and it hasn't even been released yet.. Works in the dark, can read facial expressions and even heart rate.. It can translate sign language etc etc

Its one thing to not want it.. Its another to pass off your preference as some sort of fact that were all missing.. The thing sold 24m units.. Its pretty crazy to say its a novelty that's worn off..

And you are wrong about one thing.. Its not a slight revision... Its a completely redesigned product.. Ditched the prime sense tech and developed the chip in house.. Like I said.. The only thing it shares is a name and the fact it has a camera..

[Anon1974]

n4rc said "People aren't open minded because they don't agree with you?"

I wouldn't know if they agree with me or not, because no one actually addressed the points I made, instead opting for either dismissing my comments entirely or outright name calling. That, my friend, is close minded, not simple disagreement.

You at least opted to attempt an coherent argument at the end by arguing that Kinect 2 is more than just a slight revision, and my hat's off to you for that. I'll give you it has a couple of new, neat tricks if the hype is to be believed (who can forget the "scan your skateboard" demo that went with the original Kinect) but at it's core, you have to admit it's function is still pretty much exactly the same. It flew off the shelves and then sales evaporated. That's a fad.

And I never said I didn't want one. In fact, I mentioned that I did want an old Kinect for that Once upon a monster game, I just didn't have the room in my den due to my layout. My point still stands. If the primary function of Kinect is still more or less the same and devs didn't exactly seem to make all that good use of it before, why do we suddenly think they'll have something new and exciting now? Have you seen some demo I haven't?

I'd love to see some killer app explode the gaming world and open up the awesome potential of motion control. Nothing would make me happier then to see that evolution. I'm just being realistic. I just can't see it coming from Kinect 2.0 for the reasons I explained.

If anyone has ideas as to how Kinect 2.0 could be that killer accessory that changes gaming, I'd love to hear your opinions!

[rainslacker]

The Kinect SDK's have gotten better, but it still requires quite a bit of workarounds for true precision. For that kind of thing writing your own API's is generally better, but damn is it a pain, and code testing is even worse for someone lethargic like me.:)

I originally got into Kinect programming due to possibly being able to get a job writing Unity API's for a company for Kinect, but that didn't pan out, so now I do contract work.

Kinect 2 is a pretty big step up technically, and some reports say it is much better at tracking now than when you worked on it.

Otherwise you're right. Nothing about Kinect is something that couldn't be done with an ordinary camera. Kinect just facilitates some of those processes in hardware freeing up valuable resources on the host machine. I guess the heartbeat monitor is cool for exercise games though. That particular feature may be useful to my clients as well. We'll see.:)

[FamilyGuy]

Quantic Dream works for Sony buddy lol (not owned by, but works for) :/

[GarrusVakarian]

I hope the updated tech gives devs the ability to make hardcore games now, instead of family fun or games with not as much user control than games played with a controller. I cant quite see how, but i would love to be proven wrong and be given a reason to plug it in.

[mcstorm]

I agree Kinect is more along the lines of project natal and I did enjoy games like Kinect sports and the head tracking in forza 4 but so much more can be done with Kinect 2 and its up to the developers to show us what they can add to the games.

Seeing what some developers did with Kinect like tiger woods, fifa 13, fable journey and steel battalion it could make Kinect 2 very interesting.

[GodGinrai]

Its the voice control im really looking forwardtoo. I could get used to simply "telling" my console what to do while I play. I can see myself playing destiny while telling the X1 to snap the formula 1 recap or an arsenal game (yes im a gunners fan) to the corner of the screen while arguing with my mates about how to split the loot.

[stage88]

A little bit bias coming from OXM, no?

[No_Limit]

It was OXM interviewing Unity Technologies CEO David Helgason and not an opinion piece from OXM themselves.

[HolyDuck]

Doesn't really matter.

The majority of N4G articles about PS4 come from sites like "DualShockers.com" etc...

In all honesty, I don't think it matters where the content comes from as long as it's legit.

[Saddam_hussein]

Fuck yeah. Bubbles dude. Great comment.

[Hicken]

I've never thought the Kinect wasn't amazing tech. But I still don't think it has many effective or critical applications in gaming. Given what it can do, and what it can do better than any other peripheral, it's too costly, and very limited.

[1nsomniac]

It's scientifically proven that Kinect makes 0% positive difference to the job that it was designed to do.

FACT! ....Don't believe me? search it in Google for yourself!

Then thank the scientists of Cambridge University for saving you £450

[jackanderson1985]

i can't tell if you're serious or joking.. good job on that i suppose

[Halochampian]

74.392% of statistics are made up.

[1nsomniac]

...Good call!

[KonsoruMasuta]

Did you get that statistic from that satire article? I'm pretty sure I read a satire article on here about.

[SynestheticRoar]

Kinect these nuts to your face.

[mochachino]

Kinect has been sinking the Xbox brand in gamers minds every since it was announced years ago.

Xone could have been the same price or cheaper than PS4, then it would have been a tough decision on which to get.

Currently, it's a no brainer - 99% of best games are multiplats, all will look/run as well or better on PS4 and the entry price is significantly cheaper.