Rare built prototype button controls for Kinect

re "Once you say to somebody, 'that's you on the screen,' they realise it does what you do. If you show them a table tennis table and ball coming to them - even if it's a wireframe - they naturally move to hit it.

"It's in-built life experience."

This is true to some extent, but it's not 'in built life experience' to play table tennis with just your hand.

While I wasn't lucky enough to try Kinect at the recent Eurogamer Expo, watching others play table tennis on it did much to suggest that Kinect is screaming out for some kind of peripherial that would allow for extra degrees of nuance; Kinect table tennis merely looked like a step up from breakout (i.e. align the bat with the ball) in comparison to the staggering degree of control off by the Sport Champions/Move version of the game.

I suppose it could be argued that - should you so wish - you could play Kinect table tennis while holding an actual bat...but then why not have an actual controller that could fill that role in the first place?

I'm all for experimentation and the pushing of boundaries, but I do worry that Microsoft's/Kinect's focus on controller-less gaming may well result in the device painting itself into a corner.

Another issue I see is that in video games it is often more fun to do things that are impossible in real life. In a soccer game, for example, it's fun to use expert tricks and jumping headers and such, which the player won't be able to do in their living room. If you make the actual player movements required as input simple and translate them to such expert tricks in the video game, the 1 to 1 connection from the player to their avatar is gone (the avatar won't be doing exactly what the player is doing).

That said, there are many awesome things you can do with Kinect that you cannot do with traditional controllers.

As Kinect doesn't track the hands, I see no problem with individual titles offering simple egg sized wireless controllers for each hand to do that little extra. Of course, one could argue that Microsoft should provide those in the first place.

Kinect is awesome, my concern however, is the space needed for it to operate. The distance to the players and the need for space to move will likely force many to rearrange their living room whenever they want to play, which get old very fast.

O RLY? You may not need a button to make the game work but it sure does make interacting with the system easier. Exactly what motion corresponds to pausing the game? A button sure is handy for that. How about navigating a menu and selecting one out of multiple options, again, buttons sure do come in handy there.

I tried Kinect in an exhibition in Montreal two weeks ago and it really was a very interesting experience. Controllers aren't needed when you are having fun moving, which is the most natural thing to do. This thing is great for social gaming and kid that need and enjoy to move around a lot, just remember jumping on beds and running with your hands in the air.

It seems kinect has potential when used in the right way without thinking about pro gamer performances. The user can always execute some "out of this world" moves and actions, it is only a matter of context and actions allowed in the game. Just think about about jedi powers for example.

This approach is more of a "play for fun" than "play to win", even if some games have competitive aspects. If you need to be at your top, just grab a controller.

You really don't need buttons if you want to take part in a ongoing scene where you can interact with a few movements. But i won't spend ten hours straight standing up in front of my TV waving my hands either.

I'm pretty sure game won't be developed the same way, nor with the same audience in mind than past titles for Xbox360. This is a different sheme that may become very popular with non or casual gamers, just like the Wii. But this will offer an even more complete experience since the hole body is involved.

Sure you don`t need buttons if you don`t care about more complex games and the non existing buttons isn`t the biggest problem that would be the non existing analog sticks for moving any kind of character in a larger 3D space.

Matthew given how complex the hardware is I could imagine it might be possible to have the game pause automatically if you leave the view of the camera so it pauses once it can not track anymore the person, sure that should be possible to do somehow.

Just like the EyeToy this does not seem to go very far in regards to what`s possible once you start to tackle the ideas of more complex games instead of the Wii shovelware games. Kinect might not need buttons, but apperently it needs other things like this THIS.

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@ Simeon Paskell

"I do worry that Microsoft's/Kinect's focus on controller-less gaming may well result in the device painting itself into a corner."
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Creating two pieces of technology does not have to mean that for every given task you have to use both of them.

DVD playback and the experiences created so far for Kinect as-is will work just fine with no controller, but they could (and odds are they won't) create a hand-held controller that augments the Kinect experience and fixes Kinect's inherent flaws, such as the inability to reliably track the player's fingers at range or the ability instantly control lateral movement in a 3D environment.

You could say Microsoft has painted themselves into a corner because they've spent so much on marketing the "no controller required" tag line that they can't go back on it without significant consumer backlash.

NOTE: The word they used is "required", so if they add an augmenting controller they could keep saying that, it just wouldn't be always required.

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@ Johan H. W. Basberg

"As Kinect doesn't track the hands, I see no problem with individual titles offering simple egg sized wireless controllers for each hand to do that little extra. Of course, one could argue that Microsoft should provide those in the first place. "
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I agree whole-heartedly, and in fact have written rationale as to exactly what kind of controller it would need to be.

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@ Matthew Eakins

"How about navigating a menu and selecting one out of multiple options"
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"The Wii game 'Zelda: Twilight Princess' included in its settings screens a process for enhancing pointer accuracy by telling the system the physical size and location of your TV screen relative to the Wii sensor bar. This same process can be used by the Natal device (which already knows where your body is in 3D space) to calculate where your TV is relative to your body."
-- me, here

Kinect may not be able to track the player's fingers at range, but it can track your forearm and use that information in conjunction with the location of your television to "point" at on-screen options. To select something, you could punch it.

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@ Werner Nemetz

"...the biggest problem that would be the non existing analog sticks for moving any kind of character in a larger 3D space."
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It is fully possible (albeit slow and somewhat clunky) to create lateral movement and firing controls with Kinect as-is.

Well for me "pressing" something on the screen to make i.e. a character move isn`t a "you are the controller" experience it would just replace a real controller with an imaginary controller where you press the buttons. That it is possible that way was never out of the question and it could be pulled of believable in a Mech game, but that can`t be made believable for games where you move a human character as it would not be natural.

@Jonathan "To select something, you could punch it. " Yeah, we actually did implement a solution along those lines, it was clunky and hard to use, the problem we found was that the act of selecting a menu item or a virtual button was fairly easy but when they went to actually hit or punch the button the arm movements would often cause their selection to wander off.

I believe it was Lionhead who had some great technical presentations on the issue with regards to a virtual workspace and natural human movement (and the problems thereof).

Have any devs talked about using a standard 360 controller in conjunction with Kinnect?

Have any devs talked about using a standard 360 controller in conjunction with Kinnect?

Have any devs talked about using a standard 360 controller in conjunction with Kinnect? I'm thinking something like a traditional FPS/adventure game played on the controller as normal but with elements of the 'Milo's orange fish' type stuff occasionally for puzzles...

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@ Werner Nemetz

"...that can`t be made believable for games where you move a human character as it would not be natural."
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Granted. The controller described here however probably would be.

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@ Matthew Eakins

"...the act of selecting a menu item or a virtual button was fairly easy but when they went to actually hit or punch the button the arm movements would often cause their selection to wander off."
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Couldn't that be resolved by including an on-screen hand representation (like seen here) with a targeting line? As soon as Kinect senses lateral movement, the targeting line freezes, allowing the selection punch to connect.

Well that would turn Natal into a more expensive version of the Move.

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@ Werner Nemetz

"Well that would turn Natal into a more expensive version of the Move."
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A more expensive version of Move... but with all the advantages of having a depth camera.

I highly doubt MS will do a 180 turn after denouncing over and over again the Wii and Move and that the completely controller free Kinect is the only future for motion gaming. Microsoft limited itself with what they can do with the device with comments like that and making any kind of extra controller like device for Kinect would cause some big backlash from the media and consumers.

We are talking about a company who still insists it will never ever need anything like Blu Ray because 7GB of DVD are just perfect and does nothing to evolve the digital distribution that will take over very soon according to them.