Boardrooms Across the World Will Soon Be Kinect-ed

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Boardrooms Across the World Will Soon Be Kinect-ed



CEOs and stuffy executive types will soon be using videogame technology to see each other's fancy Brooks Brothers suits.

fuzzy animals and crazy rafting games [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/].

"What we've done is really connected the game or the family room, living room scenario with the work scenario which is what I call the 'dads two kids' scenario," said Gurdeep Singh Pall from the Microsoft Office Lync & Speech Group in a presentation yesterday. "The fact that there are a million Kinects sold within the first few days, there's clearly a lot of excitement around that. We're very happy to bridge the Kinect network, the Windows Live network, the Lync enterprises, Lync Online together to form a really rich, federated network for rich communications."

Joining him in the presentation was Chris Capossela, SVP of Microsoft's Information Worker Product Management Group. "So you can actually see the Kinect devices following me as I stand up or move around the room. Again, making this available to gamers around the world is obviously why we've sold a million of these devices and Kinect Adventures and Dance Central. They're great. Gurdeep's team is saying, hey, why not actually make this a great communications device too and integrate the family room into the board room and make it incredibly easy to communicate across these different dimensions?"

Why not indeed? And why not put a Kinect in every boardroom on Wall Street? Working at an investment bank in New York City in one of my many past lives, I can tell you that those poor analysts could certainly use a break from the 90 hour work weeks they are forced to put in. A little naked Dance Central in the office would certainly blow off some steam.

Source: Microsoft [http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/exec/capossela/11-17-10Lync.mspx]


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randomrob

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Aug 5, 2009
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Right. And how much will you charge people for the privilege of using what is essentially 3-D skype Microsoft?
 

Onyx Oblivion

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Sep 9, 2008
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Great. Thanks for making me picture wrinkly old-men dancing naked in a boardroom.
 

Kukakkau

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Feb 9, 2008
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"So let's discuss our expenditures and policies for the year, so let's get star- where'd Barry go?"
"Sir he just called - apparently he red ringed"
"...Smith, tell him he is being laid off"

Seriously? Kinect conference call? How many people are going to be playing a game while on the call? That's just dumb
 

Scops

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Jan 11, 2009
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As an IT person in an organization that uses Office Communicator (the predecessor to Lync), I could totally envision a scenario when my boss would ask me to vid-conference in because he saw me online playing Gears on a Kinect'ed 360.

This scenario terrifies me.

randomrob said:
Right. And how much will you charge people for the privilege of using what is essentially 3-D skype Microsoft?
Teleconferencing solutions are tens of thousands of dollars. This would get it done for $450 per endpoint, if you were already in an environment that had Lync running. That is f'ing amazing.

The corporate world is an entirely different beast. You'd be surprised how much "freeware" actually operates on a non-commercial-use-only license.
 

Metal Brother

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Jan 4, 2010
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TOTALLY agreed with Scops.

I've been using the Lync server and client components for 3 or 4 months now, and they rock. I travel A LOT for work, and having the ability to video conference with my family from my laptop on the road while they're in the family room (as opposed to huddled around my wife's laptop) is an amazing scenario for me.

My family room isn't quite big enough for Kinect (there are around 6 feet between the TV and the couch) so I was not planning on buying one, but for me this is a true killer feature. Bring it on!
 

Metal Brother

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Jan 4, 2010
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Scops said:
randomrob said:
Right. And how much will you charge people for the privilege of using what is essentially 3-D skype Microsoft?
Teleconferencing solutions are tens of thousands of dollars. This would get it done for $450 per endpoint, if you were already in an environment that had Lync running. That is f'ing amazing.
And if you read the article, you'll see that they're planning on integrating this in with Windows Live Messenger, which has been free forever. Odds are they will monetize this by limiting it to XBox Gold members only.
 

Tron-tonian

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Mar 19, 2009
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What I want to know is when MS will turn the Kinect into the new mouse - just get hardware vendors to build it into the monitors and ta-da! no mouse required. The mouse could still be used, but I could see it being a viable alternative, esp. once the technology matures a bit and the cost comes down.