Goodbye, Kinect
“Xbox, play.”
In 2013, Don Mattrick took the Galen Center stage at E3 2013 and kicked off a press conference that left most of the gaming community reeling over the murky future of Xbox One. Mattrick and Microsoft really set their eyes on gamers’ living rooms, and hammered home their focus of its next-generation platform: television.
And you know what? It worked on me.
For the last seven years, my launch Xbox One has been the centre of my media consumption. I use it for Netflix, Stan, Prime Video, Anime Lab, and YouTube. In recent years, with the calibre of PS4 exclusives really kicking high, it’s no lie that my Xbox One has been more useful for leisure viewings rather than playing videogames. And it’s all thanks to Kinect.
I am genuinely going to miss Kinect. Not for its motion control or video conferencing capabilities, because those sucked. But I will miss it for the ability to instruct voice commands that enable me to have the most lazy movie nights possible. And even then, while only barely more responsive than motion control, voice commands provides a function that still feels futuristic in 2020. Except when I have to shout “Xbox, pause” for the umpteenth time as if it’s about to whiz on my carpet.
While Kinect debuted as little more than a gimmick in 2010 in the form of Project Natal — what with Kinectimals and Peter Molyneux’s terrifying Project Milo — it went on to represent something more integral to Microsoft’s ethos going into the Xbox One generation: function.
Around that turn of the decade, smartphones were obviously the new hotness and integrating them as a second screen was something tech companies were clammering to invent but mostly fell short on. Microsoft went mostly the same way with SmartGlass, and even Ubisoft were quick to show off real-time second screen functionality with the original Watch Dogs at the same E3. While SmartGlass came and went with the wind, the core idea of engaging with your home console via a mobile app stuck; aside from buying games and checking your social feed via the Xbox phone app, it also serves as a touch-based controller to control media. Perfect for Lazy Me, and even Sony rolled with the idea in its mobile PS App.
After virtual reality became a viable commercial platform, Microsoft stepped aside while PlayStation delved straight in and repurposed its entire motion control platform to comply with its new VR tech. Even Nintendo was so bold as to dip a toe into the VR wading pool with Labo. Instead, Microsoft turned heads and received praise in 2018 when it released its first-party Adaptive Controller: a means for disabled gamers to entirely customise inputs that suit their physical ability.
Xbox, for the last seven years, has been the kind of tech company to throw a whole pot’s worth of pasta on the wall to find that some strands, surprisingly, stuck.
“Xbox, go back.”
Returning to Kinect, the chonky camera afforded me the premium experience of being able to ‘bing it’ with my voice came a cost: AU$599 as opposed to the PS4’s $549 at launch in November, 2013. That’s not a huge discrepancy, but the margin was much wider in the US: US$499 vs $399, respectively. The Kinect inflated the cost of the Xbox One over its competitor, and the console was comparatively underpowered. Less than a year after those consoles came out, a Kinect-less version of the Xbox One was available in June 2014 and brought down the price to compete with Sony. Alas, the Little Camera That Could was doomed to fail from this point.
Look, I’m not saying there should necessarily be a Kinect 3 to compliment (confuse?) the Xbox Series X|S. Having a behemoth sensor perched in front of my TV for the sole purpose of me yelling at it isn’t really worth an extra $50-$100. But the fact I have it because I didn’t have a choice at the time of buying an Xbone means I learned to tolerate its existence, and it functionally became useful. And with the next-gen consoles out this week — with the ticket for entry being a whopping $750 each — the idea of my futuristic obelisk becoming a relic of the past makes me feel at least a little sad.
When next-gen starts this week, Xbox will be the only major gaming platform that is incompatible with motion controls. PlayStation has its Move controllers for PSVR; Switch as detachable JoyCon.
What started out as another game company chasing the motion control zeitgeist turned into a device that proved functional for interfacing with a system outside of playing games. For me, it’s a fair assessment that without the Kinect, the Xbox probably wouldn’t be the centre of my media viewing experience after all. Maybe old mate Don Mattrick was onto something after all.
“Xbox, turn off.”
