Is Xbox Kinect still worth buying in 2023? (Spoilers: NO.)
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Is Xbox One Kinect still worth buying in 2022?
Best answer: There is a small yet passionate Kinect homebrew scene, but if you’re a consumer, the answer is simply no. No way, no how. Kinect is a dead accessory, with canceled support by Microsoft. A second-hand unit will still function for the small library of available games on an original Xbox One console, and provide modest voice command support. However, you’re far better off just grabbing an Amazon Echo for the latter feature. Use voice with your Xbox: Amazon Echo Dot (From $50 at Amazon).
What happened to Kinect?
Microsoft’s misunderstood audio-visual peripheral was, at one point, the fastest-selling consumer electronics device of all time, believe it or not, with over 10 million units sold during the first six months after its release. Of course, that was the Xbox 360 version, which was vastly inferior to the «V2» version available on the Xbox One and Windows PCs.
Despite the superior power of Kinect V2, a combination of poor messaging, bad positioning, and lackluster software support led Kinect V2 as an Xbox accessory down the path of obscurity, right into being killed off completely. The technology Kinect spawned lives on as part of HoloLens and Microsoft’s partnered Windows Mixed Reality headsets, and Kinect has been used in a wide array of bespoke projects in various other industries. Where Kinect didn’t shine, however, is with the Xbox One. That’s not to say it was useless. It simply wasn’t allowed to realize its full potential.
To even use a Kinect (second hand or otherwise), you need a pricey adapter for modern Xbox consoles that can be hard to find. However, there are alternative third-party adapters like this one that do seem to do the job. There are so many hurdles to overcome to get your hands on a Kinect that I’d argue it’s not worth the effort.
Kinect games?
Microsoft blundered when it launched the Kinect V2, bundling it with the Xbox One and driving up the total price. To bring that price tag back down, the Kinect was sacrificed. The stigma it generated probably led to decreased interest, and decreased usage led to developer abandonment. There’s no reason to expect any new Kinect games to hit the platform any time soon, and the available ones aren’t exactly show-stopping «must play» games. They can provide some fleeting entertainment, but I still don’t think that makes recommending a Kinect worthwhile.
Why an Amazon Echo is better
Probably the best reason to get a Kinect right now is for the voice commands, allowing you to navigate the dashboard, control media, and even to use your TV with a proper setup. You can issue commands like «Xbox, play Battlefield 1,» or «Xbox, turn up the volume,» and you can turn up the functionality to 11 by enabling Cortana (while sacrificing some usability in the process).
Activating Cortana or Amazon Alexa integration will allow you to issue more complex commands like «What’s the weather like?» and «What is my friend Dave doing?» You can even do things like set and receive reminders, and enjoy the vast majority of Cortana features that are available on Windows 10. That said, she is sadly unresponsive compared to the stock Xbox voice commands that are enabled by default.
Ultimately, Kinect will enhance your Xbox media viewing experience by giving you access to voice commands, providing you set up the microphones correctly. It doesn’t always work, of course, and it can be a little frustrating if it fails multiple times, but when it’s gone, I will miss it.
The thing is, the cheaper, more versatile, and crucially, supported Amazon Echo can do all of the same stuff. Amazon Echo devices are cheap , and have far, far more voice features than Kinect. Cortana speakers like the Harman Kardon Invoke can also achieve the same effect, but Microsoft’s support of Cortana-based hardware hasn’t exactly been reassuring.
What about Kinect’s IR blaster?
The Xbox One S and Xbox One X come with an IR Blaster as standard, meaning that they can send signals to your TV to control volume and power, but if you’re using the original Xbox One, you could grab a Kinect to get that functionality. However, it’s a pretty costly option. You can add IR blaster functionality to your Xbox One with an IR dongle as cheap as $7 .
Kinect homebrew scene
The only real use for Kinect these days is for those with a tinkerer mindset. There are people using Kinect cameras to make all sorts of fun gadgets, if you’re so-minded. Most of these projects aren’t necessarily things the vast majority of people would be interested in, most likely. If you were here for the regular consumer-grade Kinect experience, there’s simply very little on offer these days.
Kinect has found its way into various applications, from facial recognition for dynamic ads in some malls and superstores to occasional experimental medical uses.
In general, though, Kinect is no longer supported, with its tech stripped out for the similarly dying HoloLens headset.
Get yourself an Echo
At this point, it simply does not make a whole lot of sense to buy a Kinect. You’ll be much better off with an Amazon Echo.
Amazon Echo Dot
Buy this instead.
With Kinect thoroughly dead (and requiring an unavailable adapter to use on modern Xbox consoles), you should consider picking up an Amazon Echo instead to control your media experience. The Dot is the cheapest of the Echo line.
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Jez Corden a Managing Editor at Windows Central, focusing primarily on all things Xbox and gaming. Jez is known for breaking exclusive news and analysis as relates to the Microsoft ecosystem while being powered by caffeine.
Follow on Twitter @JezCorden and listen to his Xbox Two podcast, all about, you guessed it, Xbox!
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Xbox Series X won’t support Kinect hardware, games
Dis-kinected —
Kyle Orland
—
Always watching. Top to bottom: PlayStation Eye (PS3), Playstation Camera (PS4), Xbox 360 Kinect, Xbox One Kinect.
Kyle Orland
Roughly one year ago, Microsoft revealed the Xbox Series X (then referred to as «Project Scarlett») in part by highlighting the system’s extensive backward compatibility: «Your games, your achievements, your progression, your accessories, your console experience with Xbox: it all comes forward with Scarlett.
» Today, though, the company emphasized one slight exception to that general backward-compatibility rule: Kinect hardware and the games designed for it.
«It’s our intent for all Xbox One games that do not require Kinect to play on Xbox Series X at the launch of the console [emphasis added],» Microsoft Head of Xbox Phil Spencer wrote in a sentence buried in an extensive blog post about the company’s Xbox plans (including coming xCloud integration with Game Pass). Spencer later confirmed and clarified that statement to The Verge, saying point-blank that «[t]here’s no way for Kinect to work» on the Series X.
In a sense, today’s confirmation isn’t a big surprise. We’ve known for months that the Series X is missing the proprietary Kinect port found on the original Xbox One (which was also removed from 2016’s Xbox One S and 2017’s Xbox One X). But Microsoft offered a USB adapter for the Xbox One edition of the Kinect until 2018, and third-party accessory makers still offer similar USB solutions for the hardware (the Xbox 360 version of Kinect was designed for USB but required an included power adapter to work with older versions of the console).
It probably wouldn’t have taken too much work to simply let those adapters work with the Xbox Series X as well. But that would have meant emulation development, testing, and support work that Microsoft likely isn’t interested in undertaking for a device that it hasn’t produced since late 2017 and hasn’t bundled with the Xbox One hardware since 2014.
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In practice, the lack of Series X Kinect support only affects a few dozen games from the Xbox One’s library of hundreds of titles. Of those, the ever-popular Just Dance series is likely to be the one still in active rotation among many Xbox players, but those games have let players use a smartphone as a controller for years now.
Elsewhere in the blog post, Microsoft clarifies that specialized Xbox One inputs like the Xbox Elite Controller and Xbox Adaptive Controller will still work with the Series X, which is probably more directly relevant to more Xbox One users. But we’re still a little bummed that Microsoft’s admirable commitment to «full» backward compatibility is leaving out one of the Xbox’s most unusual and memorable accessories.
Kyle Orland
Kyle has been the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica since 2012, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.
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life before and after death — Offtop on vc.ru
Achievements and history of Microsoft motion controllers from DTF.
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Kinect is dead. Microsoft no longer believes in the device, since last year the company stopped releasing it, and since January it has discontinued adapters for the Xbox One S and Xbox One X. But once they tried to make it a competitor to the Wii Remote. In the first months after the release, the motion controller even broke sales records.
Although the Kinect has no future in the gaming industry, it is still useful in other areas, and its technology continues to be used separately.
Now at least scientists, businessmen, doctors and exhibition organizers continue to believe in the device.
Doomed to fail
Peter Molyneux admits that Kinect was doomed from the start
The first hint of a motion controller for the Xbox 360 appeared back in 2007. At the D5 conference, in a joint interview with Steve Jobs, Bill Gates talks about controlling games using the camera. That soon it will be enough to take a baseball bat and wave it in front of a special camera for the athlete to repeat the action in the virtual world.
The following year, the first rumors about a new Microsoft device appear in the press. Insiders report that the company is working on its own motion controller and is going to compete with the Nintendo Wii. In the next update of the Xbox 360 dashboard, journalists find interface elements adapted to the new control device.
The rumors continued until E3 2009, where Microsoft unveiled the Project Natal sensor at its conference.
Its capabilities were demonstrated using the example of a drawing program and the Ricochet tech demo, in which you need to hit balls with your hands and feet. The latter would later serve as the basis for a full-fledged Kinect Adventures game.
The device did not need additional controllers. It tracked human movements using an infrared projector and a camera with a depth sensor, and recorded voice commands on a microphone. The projector shone with many rays, and the camera calculated the distance to objects and their movement. Thus, gestures and words controlled the character in the game.
The best feature of Project Natal was then the demo about the boy Milo from the studio of Peter Molyneux. In the video shown, the girl talked to a virtual boy, depicted how she catches and puts on the glasses thrown by the boy, drew an image on paper, showed it to the camera and it appeared in the virtual world. It was a kind of human interaction simulator.
This is the true technology of the future.
This was not even written in science fiction.
Peter Molyneux
A year later, Molyneux spoke at the TED conference, where he spoke with admiration about the creation of a «real person» in a virtual world. After that, they stop talking about the project, as if it never existed. This was Microsoft’s first sensor failure.
At the next E3, Project Natal is officially named Kinect. However, they announce a new version of the Xbox 360 with a special port for the controller.
November 4, 2010 Kinect is released in North America. In just eleven days, sales of the sensor reach a million units, and by the end of the year it has sold eight million units. Kinect becomes the best-selling gaming accessory of all time.
Then this success seemed justified. For the release of Kinect, a number of games were prepared that gave a new experience and offered to have fun in the company. Still, the Wii Remote and PS Move are additional controllers that had to be picked up.
And with Kinect, the body is the controller, you can jump, dance, or just gesticulate in front of the screen.
Such advances have encouraged Microsoft to push the new sensor further. Kinect was promoted by Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Fallon and David Beckham. Device support was added in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Forza Motorsport 4 and Mass Effect 3.
Controller Steel Battalion
In 2012, the first wake-up call sounded, the worst game for the sensor came out — Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor. The previous part of the Steel Battalion series is known for painstakingly simulating the control of a huge walking robot with the help of an exclusive controller.
In Heavy Armor, the developers tried to implement the same thing using Kinect and the Xbox 360 controller. In the end, it was Kinect that failed: it hardly recognized gestures and voice commands. It was impossible to play.
Against the background of other games for the controller, this was a failure.
Dance Central taught me how to dance, Your Shape: Fitness Evolved helped me train. Kinect Party sent back to childhood when the floor of your room turned into lava on the screen or dozens of balloons filled the space. In Kinectimals it was nice to scratch and pet animals, in Child of Eden you made music by shooting at abstract figures.
By February 2013, Microsoft had sold 24 million Kinect sensors. It was a success for the accessory, especially since it managed to outperform the competition: just three months earlier, Sony had reported 15 million PS Moves sold.
It seemed then that Kinect is now an integral part of the Xbox. Microsoft was also firm in their intentions: at the presentation of their next console, they introduced a new version of the sensor. Sony only used separate Move technologies in the Dualshock 4 controller for PS4, but decided not to push the motion controller further.
Kinect 2.0 encountered its first problem at launch. It was bundled with the Xbox One, which is why the console cost $100 more than the PS4.
The players were literally forced to use a device without which the console could work quietly. The first impression of the console was spoiled.
But Kinect 2.0 was much better than its predecessor. The device was able to recognize facial expressions, heartbeat and body temperature, and its camera shot video in 1080p resolution.
Xbox One could be controlled by voice commands and gestures: open applications, pause video, turn up the volume on command, or navigate menus with a wave of the hands. At first, the new features made you feel like the hero of the movie Minority Report. And walking into a room and saying «Xbox On» to turn on the console was just hilarious.
The new features are especially useful in fitness equipment like Xbox Fitness. When you can see how warm your muscles are on the screen, it helps to understand how effectively you performed the exercises
At first everything was fine with the games. New Kinect Sports Rivals and Dance Central are out.
Voice commands and gestures were added to Forza Horizon 2 and D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die.
There were also original things like Fantasia: Music Evolved, which offered to act as a musical instrument and perform music with movements. In Zoo Tycoon, the player managed the zoo and took care of the animals: feeding the elephant or washing the giraffe.
But then the situation changed dramatically. The decision to sell the Xbox One without the Kinect was still sound and doubled the sales of the console. But then it got worse. In 2015, with the update of the Xbox One dashboard, navigation through the menu using the sensor disappeared. Microsoft stopped developing their own games for the controller and no longer forced developers to add device support to their projects. So in Forza Horizon 3 it was still possible to communicate with voice commands with the navigator, and already in Forza Motorsport 6 it does not use Kinect at all.
At the same time, Microsoft has not stopped supporting developers.
The designer of Fru, one of the latest games for Kinect, does not blame them for what happened and is grateful for their help on the technical side.
According to him, he understands that it was a business decision to abandon Kinect, but most of all, his team did not have enough advertising from the platform owner. And while Through Games didn’t get much promotion, they managed to make one of the most original motion controller games out there.
The main feature of Fru is the shadow of the player from the real world, which must be controlled to open secret passages
The further, the more they forgot about Kinect. Of the games released after Fru, the most notable are Ubisoft’s Just Dance series and Fruit Ninja Kinect 2.
In October 2017, Microsoft discontinued Kinect.
In January 2018, the company stopped making Kinect 2.0 adapters for Xbox One S and Xbox One X.
Why was the device dropped so quickly and suddenly? There were several reasons for this.
For starters, Kinect required free space to play, it couldn’t be put in any apartment.
Fruit Ninja Kinect
Worst of all, it was only a prototype device from the future. At first, the ability to control gestures and voice was amazing, but at the same time it also caused irritation. The controller often did not track gestures, did not pick up the voice, or did not register them well. Players are still accustomed to the accuracy of control in games — without it, skill depends on luck, and not on your actions.
The
Kinect is not precise enough for a controller and once the novelty effect wears off, the device is no longer useful for the market. At the same time, interest in investment also fell.
former Microsoft
Insider
In addition, games for the sensor were developed mainly by enthusiasts, large studios were simply not interested in this. Experimentation comes with risks, and established series like Halo and Gears of War don’t need Kinect.
In the end, Microsoft stumbled on its own by including Kinect with the Xbox One on a mandatory basis. The doubling of console sales after removing the sensor from the kit and lowering the price only made the mistake even more obvious. After that, it was easier to no longer invest in a device that brings losses.
Nevertheless, Microsoft continued to use Kinect technology, and the controller itself is still useful in other areas.
How Kinect was used
Almost immediately after the release of the sensor, the first competition among developers started. Adafruit, then leaders in open source hardware, promised $1,000 to the first person to write a free Kinect driver.
Just six days after the motion controller went on sale, the Hector hacker completed the task and received the bounty, which by then had been raised to $3,000.
After writing a free driver for Kinect, the device found many unusual uses. With its help, they subordinated the vacuum cleaner to gesture control and turned the bath into a playground — purely for fun.
Microsoft was against developing any free drivers for Kinect for a long time, but eventually gave in and released an official SDK. Since then, the sensor has become available not only to developers and enthusiasts.
In advertisement
Japanese clothing store United Arrows brought a mannequin to life in its storefront using Kinect. It’s simple: the sensor tracks the movements of a person in front of the shop window, the mannequin repeats them. The retailer tried in this way to lure customers, or at least leave a positive impression about the store.
In a shopping mall in South Korea, a Coca-Cola vending machine gave away drinks for winning a game. The car was equipped with a screen and a Kinect sensor. She lured passing visitors to take part in a dance competition. If you repeat the movements shown on the screen — a drink as a gift.
Guarding the borders of the country
Ko Jae Kwan
In 2014, Kinect was put in charge of monitoring the neutral zone between North and South Korea.
Based on free device drivers, programmer Ko Jae Kwan created a system for tracking violators. She is able to distinguish between people and animals. As soon as the sensor detects movement near the neutral zone, the system immediately notifies the nearest post.
For scanning exhibits
In 2017, the Field Museum of Natural History replaced professional equipment with a Kinect sensor. It so happened that specialized tooth scanners could not capture the entire jaw of a tyrannosaurus rex. Then the museum staff turned to the MIT Media Lab’s Camera Cultur agency. Representatives of the agency found a solution: they created a device based on Kinect and scanned his jaw.
Although the sensor resolution is five times less than scanners, it costs two hundred times less. In addition, its accuracy was enough to reproduce a sufficiently high-quality image to study the holes in the teeth.
In music
Composer Chris Wick uses the Kinect as a musical instrument.
With the help of the sensor, he played dubstep, used the device on stage in performances, replaced the DJ console with it. Vic also played the massive organ in Melbourne City Hall.
Despite the age of the instrument — it was made in 1929 — in the 90s the organ was modified with a MIDI controller. To him, the musician connected the sensor to perform a part in a duet with singer Alice Richards.
Nine Inch Nails transformed their 2013 tour performances with Kinect. Sensors were placed around the perimeter of the stage to track the movements of the musicians and transmit them to screens at the far end of the stage. When the lights went out, only abstract silhouettes remained against the backdrop of light music, accompanied by heavy industrial rock.
The
Kinect has become the standard for interactive arts because it’s affordable. The best gift for a person with a creative vision. They [Microsoft] may kill the official product, but I don’t think the love for it will die in the world of interactive arts.
Rob Sheridan, former art director of Nine Inch Nails
How Kinect continues to be used
In trade
Some clothing stores have adopted Kinect as a virtual fitting room. Let’s say a girl approaches a mirror screen, selects a dress with gestures. Meanwhile, the camera scans it so that the program shows how this dress will look on the customer.
Already in 2012, the first demonstration scenario of such a sensor application appeared. Soon, based on it, Nike created their own interactive mirror. Then Timberland joined in. And since 2015, FXGear has been supplying FXMirror interactive mirrors by order.
IKEA has figured out how to cheer up their customers with the help of Kinect — they created the «Motivating Mirror». The camera scanned each person who approached, noticed a bright feature in him, and the mirror said inspiring compliments: “You have a cool beard!” or “This shirt really suits you!” — in that spirit.
If desired, the device could be ordered home.
For interactive exhibitions
The
Kinect isn’t perfect at motion detection, but it’s powerful enough to make exhibitions fun. Especially for children and youth. I saw this for myself when I visited the Know Yourself, Know the World educational center at the Darwin Museum.
A view of the planet Earth from outer space was projected onto the five-meter screen of the Biosphere installation. With the help of the sensor, it was possible to rotate the planet, bring the continents closer, launch videos and interact with animals. This is the case when involvement in the process attracted attention better than contemplation from the outside. I would hardly have lingered at the booth for a long time if there were just rollers playing there.
Similarly, Kinect is used at trade shows around the world. So in the Hall of Art in New York they created an installation that helped children explore different ecosystems.
Nine projectors and a dozen sensors turned the walls into an interactive space of nine hundred square meters.
How does it work? The child stretches out his hand in front of the screen and a seed appears there. As soon as you put your hand down, a seed falls into the ground and a plant grows in that place. And so on: you interact with ecosystems and learn about the world around you.
And there are many such examples.
The Treachery of Sanctuary installation at Barbican’s 2014 Digital Revolution allowed you to see yourself reflected as a work of art
The project Les Metamorphoses de Mr Kalia showed how living beings can change the structure of their body
Business
Such installations are by no means an isolated solution. Agencies that organize product launches and exhibits continue to use Kinect in their business. So the Biosphere, which I talked about above, was created by the Askrin company.
Another Russian company Design Dossier develops interactive solutions for promoting goods and services. Among their recent works is the “Augmented Reality Sandbox” at the stand of the Moscow Government of the Open Innovations Forum in 2015 and 2017. The project has two goals: entertainment for children, as well as an educational game in which you can learn the physics of sand.
French brand Brother System creates interactive spaces for entertainment. Their projects include a showcase at the Les Rives de l’Orne shopping center and an installation at the Beauregard festival.
The international company Virtualware also develops presentations and programs using Kinect. In 2014, she created an advertising stand for a tourism exhibition. Visitors pretended to be a bird flying in front of Kinect and navigated through Mexico, and then explored individual cities and natural regions.
Medical
VirtualRehab, another Virtualware project, helps to repair neuromuscular disorders.
The program is intended for doctors. They set up a set of individual exercises and monitor how patients perform them in order to plan further treatment.
British scientists are investigating the Kinect’s ability to detect respiratory diseases. The traditional spirometry procedure requires expensive equipment and trained staff.
Against this background, an accessory from a game console looks like an affordable solution. In addition, the built-in depth sensor in Kinect 2.0 can build a three-dimensional model of the chest in real time. This is enough to track its volume and bend in the process of breathing.
The study has been ongoing since 2016. Last year, scientists compiled a report and concluded that at the moment the accuracy of the Kinect sensor is not enough. Now they are working on finalizing the device.
Kinect is still useful in operating rooms. For quality work, surgeons need to view X-ray images and tomography results. Switching them or resizing them with the mouse and keyboard is not possible — it’s not hygienic.
But with the help of gestures — quite.
The first designs of Kinect-based controllers for computers in operating rooms appeared as early as 2011. For the past few years, GestSure has provided similar solutions. According to their CEO, Kinect is still the most suitable time-of-flight camera for their needs and they are not going to abandon it anytime soon.
Microsoft no longer makes Kinect, but continues to use its technology in the Windows Mixed Reality platform. The HoloLens eyeglasses camera scans the environment with more advanced sensors of the same type to complement the room with holograms of Windows applications. So you can place several windows on the wall with Skype, Microsoft Edge and Forza Horizon 3. Or, without leaving your home, go on a trip to Rome through HoloTour.
The platform is still being developed and is currently limited to Microsoft Store apps. But perhaps in the near future it is thanks to Kinect technology that augmented reality and holographic interfaces from science fiction will enter our lives.
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