When Microsoft first announced the Xbox One, it was a package deal: Kinect was the Xbox One, the Xbox One was Kinect. We all know how that worked out. The Xbox One launched at $100 more expensive than its competitor, thanks in a large part to the curious depth-sensing camera that came bundled with it, and it devastated sales. The next summer, Microsoft announced that they would be unbundling the Kinect and allowing gamers to buy just the console, effectively making the peripheral an eccentric add-on at best. The gambit worked, to some degree: Xbox One sales are starting to recover (after some more aggressive discounting), and Phil Spencer and co. are doing their best to shake some of the "entertainment first" connotations the Xbox One got in the early days. But the Kinect is still there.
Spencer gave an interesting interview with Games Radar where he cops to the fact that at the end of the day, the Kinect doesn't really have a place in the modern AAA games experience. It's still part of the entertainment package, he cautiouns, but the team still seems to be backing away from the thing in general. Here's the relevant quote:
The teams continue to look at ways that Kinect makes the entertainment experience better. I’d say the area that hasn’t really landed – and I don’t know if it will – is, ‘Is Kinect integral to all of the core gaming scenarios on our console in terms of minute-to-minute gameplay?’ There are genres where Kinect works really well, but if you’re playing Halo or Call Of Duty, there’s not really a scenario that says, ‘Hey, I need a Kinect.’ There is a lot of excitement, and there are still announcements to come about what people are doing with it. But [Kinect’s] place will be earned through the experiences that are out there and the developers that show interest. We will continue to build functionality through voice and using the RGB and depth cameras, and we’ll stay focused on that, but giving the consumers choice is pretty critical.
It brings to mind memories of yelling at my TV to fire arrows back with Ryse: Son of Rome. Not the worst thing, I guess, but superfluous and odd nonetheless. Microsoft appeared to have the idea that Kinect was going to be part of all games experiences with the Xbox One, not just those centered around dancing. It never really worked, for a couple of reasons. Like Spencer said, the "why" was left totally unanswered. But I'm not sure that was it -- the tech also seemed to be lacking. The voice controls are spotty at best, and Microsoft seems content to pretend that gesture controls never existed in the first place. I never successfully played Kinect Sports Rivals. The thing about a machine like Kinect is that it has to be perfect to work at all -- halfway just doesn't cut it. For whatever reason, this device seems to have missed the mark.
