In 2009 gamers were promised “a whole new way to play” from Xbox that would offer gamers “extraordinary entertainment experiences for everyone to enjoy”. This exciting innovation was to come courtesy of what Xbox at the time were calling Project Natal. On the anniversary of the peripheral’s debut, StickTwiddlers take a look to see just how close Xbox have gotten to delivering on the promises of Kinect.
Joy Ride Turbo launched 10 years ago today. The first title was Xbox Kinect exclusive, yet this sequel failed to support the device at all.
Cultured Vultures: "Sadly, not all hardware is created equal, and no matter how much developers might try, some gaming hardware just fails to hit the mark. We’ve compiled a list of 10 gaming hardware fails, and boy did some fail hard."
I would label the Power Glove, Kinect, and that Tony Hawk skateboard more as hardware addons hardware failure would be like the Virtual Boy and one day Stadia.
The picture should be the 360 RROD. When I think of gaming hardware failures that's what springs to mind. Kinect and it's bundled price tag definitely hobbled the already underpowered Xbox One though for sure so I would give it a close second place.
Lol I had the Atari Jaguar, surprised its "competition" the 3DO isn't on the list too, both as "popular" as each other.
Stadia is a weird one. It hasn’t sold at all well but in terms of how it works it’s still miles ahead of Xcloud in terms of stability and performance. Xcloud is still a way behind and that needs sorting but it will be in time. Stadia for me is one of those things that will go down as a what could have been moments. With better marketing it could have been a roaring success. I still play it and it remains the best place in my opinion to play CyberPunk 2077. Only platform I have played it on without having any issues at all. The tech is great. The concept is fine. Marketing terrible. Shame really.
The Xbox One was Microsoft’s Nintendo Wii U. Undercooked, undersold and just an unholy mess. The thing is with any of these failures is to learn from them and thankfully both Nintendo and Xbox did just that to the benefit of gamers everywhere.
Xbox 360's Kinect had flopped yet Microsoft insisted on mandatory Kinect for Xbox One, driving the price up and alienating their potential customers.
the tech was pretty damn good but their focus on making it the centerpiece was not. Had they opted to keep it as a secondary or even tertiary device, it may have found new use for AR/VR.
Kinect requirement, TV focused, DRM, and $100 buried Xbone before it even stared.
I was kind of excited for the kinect. It had potential. That was until i tried it at one of their Microsoft store. The thing was so laggy and worker who was there, had no clue what he was doing. It kind of made rethink about buying an Xbox One with Kinect.
The damage to the Xbox brand was so hard that til this day they are just the last place brand in the market.
Its sad because the Xbox one version of Kinect was actually pretty solid. Not for motion games, I couldnt care less about those, but for the other features that are now commonplace in the gaming ecosystem. Things like voice control and optional motion features in games. Stuff that Sony did with the PS camera was pretty sweet and they could have done some of that stuff with Kinect.
The tech was pretty sweet when implemented right though. Who remembers the implementation in Dead Rising 3?! You could lure zombies away by saying stuff into the kinect, it was a bit hokey at first, but it actually enhanced the game significantly once you learned all the different voice commands. There was and still is nothing else like that!
The focus on TV seemed to be an issue for people, but the TV pass through had some real potential. They could have had cable companies giving the XBone out instead of cable boxes! I understood what they were trying to do, but they needed to show the games too, and thats where they lost the core gamers. Being able to jump right to a sports event or TV show with out leaving the console was actually a pretty cool thing. I spent many nights switching between NHL games or TV shows and jumping right back into my games seamlessly, just by telling Kinect to do so. It was better than people care to admit, but I loved it!
People say XBone had no games, but on launch I got Dead Rising 3, AC Black Flag, Watch Dogs, Killer Instinct, Battlefield 4, Forza 5, and Ryse. That was actually a pretty solid lineup in hindsight! Then later on it got gems like Quantum Break, Dead Rising 4, Sunset Overdrive, Gears 4 and 5, the Ori games, Rare Replay, Forza Horizon 3/4, State of Decay 2, ReCore (SUPER UNDERRATED GEM), Halo 5, Halo Wars 2, and all the great 3rd party stuff as well! I dare anyone who sat on the Xbox One to go back and give it a shot now.
It was actually a pretty great console all things considered. Yes the PS4 had better 1st party stuff, stuff that MS just couldnt top or even compete with, but there are some really great games that a lot of people missed out on that they would probably really enjoy if they actually played them. Thats why I recommend a Series S and Gamepass to a lot of people, as its a great way to get an awesome lineup pf games for super cheap!
ummmmm... a galaxy far, far away
Project Natal was like the bomb during E3 2009 especially when it was presented by Steven Spielberg.
When the concept product debuted as Kinect in 2011, it set a new Guinness record as the "fastest ever selling consumer device in the planet" even beating the record of iPhone 4 at that time. This was one of Steve Ballmer's highlights in his career as Microsoft's CEO for more than a decade.
You can't believe how many people were actually wanting to buy just the product itself during Black Friday.
Now, it's just another piece of device.
It looked good on paper, it looked even better in the PR video shown to everyone.
But the final product was less than garbage. When you can sit there and say that only, maybe 5 games were OK using Kinect for the 360 then I would consider that a failure.
This Kinect for the X1 needs to be a companion device only, used for scanning faces, voice recognition in games and other things that would enhance gameplay and not depend on it.
Wow. Where did this come from lol
I am quite happy with the newest version of Kinect. It works for the most part quite well. I've enjoyed the games and offerings this device give me.