UK Kinect price

£130?
They must be having a giraffe. I might as well just go buy a Wii.
I think this is going to be a massive flop for both MS and Sony.
 
Some interesting articles doing the rounds:

First goes into detail on how Kinect works:

insidekinectmain_w500.jpg


http://www.t3.com/feature/exclusive-how-does-microsoft-xbox-kinect-work?

It’s made of two main parts: a projector and an IR VGA camera. The former bounces out a laser (don’t worry, Microsoft insists it’s safe) across the entire field of play, which the camera picks up to separate you from your sofa on what’s called a ‘depth field.’ It’s essentially all the pixels that Kinect gets back as IR noise measured in varying colour dependant on how close they are to the system. That way bodies appear a bright shade of red, green etc, and things further away appear grey.

The software takes this image and runs it through a host of filters so that Kinect can work out what’s a person and what’s not. The system follows a basic system of guidelines, such as ‘a body is from x-foot tall to x-foot tall’ and ‘a person has two arms and two legs’ to work out that your coffee table or dog aren’t extra players. It’s also taught to be able to pick you out if you’re wearing baggy clothes or have hair coming over your shoulders. When we saw this as the developers see it, it was impressively accurate at sussing out each body part (right shoulder, for example) from not much information.
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And also an interesting interview with a Kinect developer from Blitz Games Studios.

http://www.next-gen.biz/features/interview-andrew-oliver

Motion tracking is never completely clean – how good is Kinect?

It's a very clever system that they've got. They look at the depth data, they work out fairly quickly if it's a human, and then they apply their algorithms to give you all the bones or whatever. And if you're standing up in front of it, it kind of works, and now with the new software libraries, if you're sitting down on the sofa, it works. OK, so one big thing that people were questioning was whether you could sit on the sofa. The new libraries work, but there are certain things, like in our fitness game, where you sit on the floor where it kind of gets confused. But the most expensive motion capture systems you can get out there, probably Vicon, it's like: you can break those as well, and that's why you employ clean up animators to go an fill in all the little gaps and stuff like that. So, we don't have the luxury of having that offline clean up ability, we have to do it live.
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Well worth reading both just for the tech.

Personally I think there's some very clever stuff going on and there's way more hardware in the camera than I thought. Some of the voice recognition / tracking stuff is amazing.
 
One important factor here - Kinect is just a method of providing data to software. We all know software can evolve, change and get better. So just as the games have gotten better since launch in 2005, so will Kinect titles. :D
 
ic1male said:
One important factor here - Kinect is just a method of providing data to software. We all know software can evolve, change and get better. So just as the games have gotten better since launch in 2005, so will Kinect titles. :D
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True, but doesn't it seem abit late in X360's lifespan to be evolving that much?

Surely a new model is scheduled for the next few years?

I mean it's been out what 5 years, would have thought most of the evolving has taken place already? :)
 
Motion tracking is never completely clean – how good is Kinect?

It's a very clever system that they've got. They look at the depth data, they work out fairly quickly if it's a human, and then they apply their algorithms to give you all the bones or whatever. And if you're standing up in front of it, it kind of works, and now with the new software libraries, if you're sitting down on the sofa, it works. OK, so one big thing that people were questioning was whether you could sit on the sofa. The new libraries work, but there are certain things, like in our fitness game, where you sit on the floor where it kind of gets confused. But the most expensive motion capture systems you can get out there, probably Vicon, it's like: you can break those as well, and that's why you employ clean up animators to go an fill in all the little gaps and stuff like that. So, we don't have the luxury of having that offline clean up ability, we have to do it live.
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That basically tells me that its just average at best, and will have some recognition problems. This has really just confirmed to me why I should not invest. I'll save my money instead for a 3DS.
 
Not the Xbox 360 itself - the software development kits for Kinect. They are brand new. It's those that will get better. But yes, you are right, there should be a new model of Xbox by 2014. I guess it depends on how well Kinect does as to whether they continue with it in the next generation.
 
Abooie said:
Personally I think there's some very clever stuff going on and there's way more hardware in the camera than I thought. Some of the voice recognition / tracking stuff is amazing.
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Agree with you ... This definitely looks like another loss leader for microsoft ... You're getting some pretty nifty tech for £130. Looking forward to it being hacked and driven on a PC for more practical applications :cool:

I thought I was tight on these forums but WTH ! - I'm really surprised at how many forum members think that this is 'overpriced' but would rather pay £400 for a fantec wheel :rolleyes: As far as Microsoft is concerned they know that they'll have to lose money to make money especially when up against stiff competition.

Personally I've wasted a lot more $$$ on bits of plastic and PCBs in my time this is just a drop in the ocean by comparison.

Roll on November, roll on hacking this beaut.
 
Subliminal Aura said:
Agree with you ... This definitely looks like another loss leader for microsoft ... You're getting some pretty nifty tech for £130. Looking forward to it being hacked and driven on a PC for more practical applications :cool:

I thought I was tight on these forums but WTH ! - I'm really surprised at how many forum members think that this is 'overpriced' but would rather pay £400 for a fantec wheel :rolleyes: As far as Microsoft is concerned they know that they'll have to lose money to make money especially when up against stiff competition.

Personally I've wasted a lot more $$$ on bits of plastic and PCBs in my time this is just a drop in the ocean by comparison.

Roll on November, roll on hacking this beaut.
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MS will not be selling at a loss at all they don't do that any more.

It is over priced for what it is no one can say it's not it's the same price as a new arcade £100 would have been the right price but what ms do is they find out the max people will pay from surveys then price it at that.

There is nothing new in the tech at all a lot of the functions have been around in expensive web cams for long time they have just taken a load of different parts and packed them into one package.
 
edGfaCTor said:
There is nothing new in the tech at all a lot of the functions have been around in expensive web cams for long time they have just taken a load of different parts and packed them into one package.
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It is new technology, no webcam uses a laser and special IR camera for 'depth' mapping in 3D.. it's only just coming to market for Primesense and others who MS have got the tech from.

The rest is conventional , the motorised mount, the positional 4 mic array, as well as a low end webcam..

£130 is too much though, considering their competition, even if it's not the same 'thing', makes it a pretty odd risk for MS to take, I'd like to think they are mad, but I think we all know, it's success or catastrophic failure probably won't rest just on the price..
 
I think they've made a mistake in the downgrade of the camera. At the very least you'd of thought it would make a great webcam/xbl vision upgrade and being able to use your fingers would have been so much better than an arm/hand gesture. It would have allowed developers to be a bit more creative too from bit parts in full games to arcade titles.
 
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Ill probs end up getting one anyway as tbh im sad! and like my gimmics/gadgets.

and it will (maybe) make me more lazy than i am now just by talking to it :P
 
I'll be getting one, if just to keep the Mrs happy with the dancing games.

Its not quite the £50 I was hoping but about on par for what you would pay for a full set of controllers for the wii
 
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