Spencer: 'Kinect will become as integrated with 360 as Live'

Microsoft's Phil Spencer has told press that he hopes Kinect will become as much a part of the Xbox experience as Live support.

Speaking to GameSpot at a Kinect launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Spencer claimed that every first party development kit has a Kinect attached, in the same way that they all have an internet connection, but that Microsoft wasn't interested in forcing Kinect into situations where it wasn't useful.

"Well we view Kinect as a fundamental part of the platform. It is as core to the platform as Live is," Spencer said.

"We think about the all products in our pipeline, including things that haven't been announced. And just like there's an (internet) pipe connected to the dev kits, there's a camera connected to the dev kits. So you think about those dev kits and those teams and that creative space, and how they want to add to that experience."

"I think over time for first party, you're not going to see that differentiation between 'Is that a Kinect game?' and 'Is that not a Kinect game?' You're just going to think about these things as 360 games. Now that doesn't mean there's no controller included. This is just like Live, since Live is used in many different ways across many different experiences that we build."

However, when asked if games were likely to have Kinect support added retroactively, Spencer seemed to indicate that this would not be the case.

"We start thinking about stuff from the beginning, about the full capabilities of the system, and then getting the best creators thinking about the whole ecosystem and creating on top of it. This isn't about trying to ram stuff in where it doesn't belong.

"For us, the experience is from the ground up, and that's why you see the first launch experiences are completely body controlled. That was the bar we set for ourselves: to make a game that uses the body that's as fun as one that uses the controller. We're putting those games out there, customers will tell us what they think. Third parties have put out a lot of games, and I've been really impressed with the creative that's come to market."

Xbox Kinect will be available in UK retailers from November 10, 2010.