Comments

• NotZed

  2010-11-11 05:45:26

  Kinect will probably out-do the eye-toy, if only because there will be more games for it (and a truckload of cash in marketing). I guess a failure is relative - eye-toy was an experiment (I suppose?) and never expected to sell massively and probably did ok, on the other hand it seems to be M$'s final roll of the dice to broaden the xbox 'hard' core customer base. $500m is a lot of advertising. Can't really tell if the ps move is just a me too thing or expected to sell systems.
  
  Still, reviews like this probably point out the main issue:
  
  http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/11/parents-xbox-kinect/
  
  i.e. Complexity. It's hard to setup properly, you have to stand in fairly specific location, and a little unintuitive to use. A small room or a piece of furniture or moving too fast or even holding stuff all throw it out. If a sizeable fraction of the families who tear one of these open on xmas morning end up with swearing or crying children when some little thing stops it working it could sink like a stone. The weak copy-cat games don't help much either - although it's hard to see what else it is capable of, i.e. can it really do a lot more than the eye toy, or just do what the eye toy did but a bit (or somewhat) better?
  
  It's interesting enough hardware ... for research/tech demo purposes, but it doesn't seem to be at the idiot-proof level required of the mass-market.
  
  The comments on the wired blog are telling - e.g. pointing out 'foolish' things like being too close to the wall, the light too bright, or shiny things on the walls. These are things that different in everyones lounge room and you'd expect it to cope with quite a range before failing catastrophically which it seems to.
  
  I've no plans to get a ps move for my ps3, and i haven't heard any of the half dozen mates with one even mention it.

• Dr. Roy Schestowitz

  2010-11-11 06:12:20

  The few people who bought "KIN" (503 people according to Gruber) are getting rid of them on eBay http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=m570&_nkw=kin&_sacat=See-All-Categories

• TemporalBeing

  2010-11-10 18:35:30

  Personally, I think MS's KINect and even Sony's PSMove Motion Controller are ultimately doomed to failure.
  
  For the Wii, the WiiMote and even the Nunchuk were there from the start - everyone could depend on there being at least the WiiMote if not both.
  
  However, Microsoft and Sony are both trying to retrofit their versions of Nintendo's technology to their systems without releasing new systems. So now game developers must either plan to not use them - or at least not require them - or they must require their users to purchase the $100-$150 USD peripherals as well. Thus a single game that requires it may cost from $120-$200 just to use the game. In this economy, game makers are not likely to force that choice.
  
  So that is failure for them right there before one even starts to look at the technical issues that users are going to face.
  
  For Sony - it's tracking a little ball that lights up in the visible light spectrum. Sunlight is going to be a very very big problem, as will flashlights, and halogen and fluorescent light bulbs.
  
  For Microsoft - it's trying to track people and their movements. Mind you have different people can look - from the scrawny teenager to the overweight wonders. Let's not forget people with injuries or other physical disorders and how that can affect movement.
  
  And for both of them, you have the issue of people getting in the way as they walk in front of the user, even briefly. Add the issues above, and you could be in for quite an interesting game play - the person carries a flashlight as they walk through, blinding or misleading the camera, and now your race car drives into the wall.
  
  Disclaimer: No, I have not used either. I don't own an XBox of any kind or a Playstation of any kind either. This is just my thoughts on the technical aspects of these devices. Sony and Microsoft probably did some work to minimize what I am talking about, but it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to entirely eliminate it.

• NotZed

  2010-11-11 05:56:03

  Tracking a glowing ball is actually relatively easy - and reliable, and fast. There's a good reason it is a sphere (possibly why spheres are used for mocap). Also remember it is infra-red so it's a very bright ball to track, and the accelerometers can be used to qualify and clean up the data or even to approximate it reasonably well when the ball is obscured.
  
  The kinect thing is just so much more complicated with far more processing required. The lag is hidden by software guessing what you're intentions are. There's just so much more that can go wrong/guess wrong/not work at all/or just not be very fun. Even the eyetoy could handle (multiple) people overlapping simply - since it wasn't trying to model their skeleton or even identify individuals, and this seems completely impossible for *any* kinect game.

• TemporalBeing

  2010-11-11 12:20:41

  Even if it is in the infrared, while that is a little easier than the visible light spectrum - it's still not a very easy thing. I work with cameras and infrared lasers all the time. Sun light is a big issue - it can quickly blot out or obscure the entire image such as to make the data useless.
  
  Also you have the safety issue with infrared as the eye does not protect itself very well against it. More of an issue with lasers than a general infrared lightbulb, but exposure time to it could be an issue. Hope Sony is willing to start taking "PSMove blinded me" lawsuits if they really are using infrared.