Tradjus said:
Now that it isn't, why in the WORLD would anyone put Kinect functionality into a game?
I was going to answer "MS will demand that their first-party developers implement some kind of tacked on kinect feature," akin to Sony with their "touchpad" thing, but then I thought better of it. Reason being, MS put a kinect-less console out there because they've accepted the kinect isn't going to move units. They will make the argument "that it's still integral," but we all know that they're blowing smoke. Something isn't "integral" when you make it "optional." That said, would they have their first party developers waste resources with a kinect functionality that some of their player base won't even be able to use? They're going to the trouble of manufacturing kinect-less consoles in the hopes of selling them, so why would then then mandate resources to a feature that they've pretty much accepted will likely go unused?
This is quite a mess they find themselves in.
With regard to the voice features, has anyone been around someone that insists on constantly using those? It is annoying. The in work area next to mine is a programmer. Everyone's working only to be interrupted by him yelling at his phone "Call Jane Doe, Office." You then hear his phone reply "calling Jane Doe. Office." He then, sometimes, picks up the phone placing it to his ear. I've talked with others about it saying "Is yelling at the phone THAT much more convenient than using his thumb to scroll through the contacts?" It makes me think of those commercials that make the most mundane of activities appear to be terribly complicated:
"Everyone needs to make calls. But picking up your phone is such a hassle [shows someone feigning physical pain at the exertion of lifting their phone]. And holding onto it? What a chore [shows phones being dropped and broken]. And then taking the time to find the right contact? Forget it! [shows someone painstakingly scrolling through their contacts]. Well no there's SIRI. The handsfree way to dial anyone in your contacts, without having to pick up your phone."
The first time this hit me was when I walked into the room and witness my wife, phone in hand, saying "SIRI, set alarm for 7am." I thought:
1) You were alone in this room. Being alone in a room and shouting at your phone makes you look like a crazy person. Let's all take a step back and imagine ourselves alone in a house, yelling instructions at our devices
2) You're not alone, so yelling makes you an annoying, disruptive, asshole.
3) One of the beauties of my current setups is that I can play a video game in the middle of the night while other sleep, undisturbed. That goes out the window if in order to play my game, I have to turn on lights (so that kinet can see me), and yell commands due to some shoehorned voice feature. To that end, the voice features don't help me. I can't walk into the living room at 1am while others are sleeping and yell "Kinect! Play Titanfall!" I mean I could, but that would make me an inconsiderate ass.
I just don't see the appeal of voice commands outside of handsfree dialing while driving.
