| 20 NOV 2010 at 12:46pm |
| Deleted User | Parallel to the topical thread here "Where are AGs going?", this may be of some interest for the future –both for gamers, and for others
If the following article is genuine, a million have been sold in just a few days with 5 million to come in just over a month.
The PrimeSense/Kinect technology is not my cup of tea personally – but will it shake up AG's and if so, how, and for better or for worse?
Newspaper article – Friday 19-11-10.
PrimeSense’s technology, at the heart of the hit new Microsoft Kinect device, aims to make remote controls obsolete.
Computer giant Microsoft announced this week that within 10 days of a November 4 launch date, it has sold 1 million units worldwide of its cutting-edge, hands-free Kinect gaming device.
But less known is that at the heart of the successful release is PrimeSense, a five-year-old Tel Aviv-based start-up company, responsible for the revolutionary 3D motion-sensing camera inside the Kinect. And, in no small part thanks to PrimeSense, the game console is on track to hit 5 million in sales by the end of the year.
“We live in a world in which technology is becoming more and more sophisticated, with an array of applications and features which are complicated and tiresome for the consumer to use, like remote controls and buttons to push. The technology we have developed provides a platform that sees and is unseen and can seamlessly be integrated with other technologies,” said Aviad Maizels, president and founder of Prime- Sense, in an interview with The Jerusalem Post on Thursday.
“The idea is that the consumer can use machines and appliances that understand them seamlessly,” he said. “Our vision is that in the future you will see a natural interface which is being adopted everywhere and to every aspect of life.”
Kinect is a sensing device that is plugged into the Xbox 360 and lets consumers play games simply through body motions and speaking commands.
“It’s a great success launch,” Maizels said. “The numbers speak for themselves, and I think they are even better than the launch of the iPhone and the iPad.”
In the US, more than 30,000 stores are selling Kinect, including branches of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp., Best Buy Co. and GameStop Corp., as well as Amazon.com. The device went on sale on November 10 in Europe and on Thursday in much of Asia, and it will hit Japanese markets on Saturday.
Maizels and a team of four – Alexander Shpunt, Ophir Sharon, Tamir Berliner and Dima Rais – all in their 20s and with a passion for games, founded the company in 2005. Before starting PrimeSense, Maizels served in an elite IDF intelligence unit as head of a technological R& section. Shpunt, the co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, served in an air force R& unit.
“The idea behind the development of the technology stemmed from a problem we identified, which is on the one hand the complexity of using devices with more and more features and more and more buttons to push and manuals to read, and on the other hand that consumers are making less usage of features since they are not user-friendly,” Maizels said.
“We wanted to find a platform through which it would be natural for people to interact intuitively with their appliances by bringing communication closer to technology. We believe that in the future, the natural interaction trend – where your movements control the gadgets and devices around you – will take over our lives. There’ll be no remote control to lose and no buttons to push.”
Behind PrimeSense’s technology are sensors that enable control of appliances without external devices. In a broader vision of the technology, the idea is that a person sitting on a living room sofa and facing a TV is able to command the screen with a flick of the wrist. In effect, this means that the mouse, touch pad and remote control will become obsolete, as Prime- Sense’s system tracks the user’s hand motions in the air and reacts.
PrimeSense, which is headquartered in Tel Aviv, has raised nearly $30 million from venture capital firms Gemini Capital, Genesis Venture Capital and Canaan Partners. Within five years of its founding, Prime- Sense has expanded its workforce to 130 with offices in North America, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.
The Xbox is just the beginning of the big plans PrimeSense is developing. The company intends to license its technology for use with a wide range of applications within the consumer device industry. Prime- Sense is also now looking to expand to partnerships in the television, mobile telephone and Internet industries.
“Soon you will see more and more rollouts of the technology in other domains. We are starting with gaming and then we will move to other aspects of the living room,” Maizels said. “We want to grow to a large, independent company and become a leader of consumer lifestyle.”
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 1:57pm |
DonaJourneyman
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Status : Offline | Interesting article. I know a couple of people who got Kinect, but both of their consoles red ringed before they had a chance to try it. So much for Microsoft's technology.
In the end of the day, this is just a new way of controlling a game. It reminds me of Wii and what did it do for AGs? Nothing. People are lazy and I don't see how they will keep up with jumping in front of their screen once the excitement of new technology wears off. When you come home from work dead tired, would you rather push a few buttons or wave your arms and legs?
When it comes to (classic) AGs, I'd rather focus on touch-screen devices like Nintendo DS and iPad.
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 2:30pm |
FnordSchattenjger
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Status : Offline | The ball is now in the developers hands. While I don't think that AGs will be revolutionized by this, at least not short term, it is a very interesting piece of technology, and we might well see it being used in interactive movies along the line of Heavy rain, in order to place you in the game, as the main character. But developing such games might get very expensive (guessing here), which might mean that developers & publishers won't dare to take such a huge risk for a concept that has not been proven yet. For classic point & click adventure games, Wii still feels like an easier console to work with.
The big risk that I see here is that Kinect won't get any decent titles released for it, and because of that, people won't buy it, which in turn means that no games will be developed for it. Remember the Wii launch? There were a lot of bad games being released for that console, and I'm sadly not seeing a whole lot of good games released for Kinect at the moment. Wii had the big advantage over the other consoles of being cheaper and as you are basically forced to use your wiimote, there is no risk of it going obsolete, like a lot of extra hardware for other consoles have become over the years. Nintendo would still continue to support their console, they did after all not have much of a choice either way. With Kinect not being such an integrated part of the console, there is a real risk of it falling to the wayside.
But I sure hope that this works out well. Development likes this drives technology forward.
Oh, and by the way, does anyone remember the old green screen (type) games that were seen in certain arcade halls in the early-mid 90s? You would stand in front of a screen (the ones I saw were actually grey), with a camera filming you from the front, and a TV showing you what was going on in the game (and where in the game you were standing). Kinect seem to be a more advanced version of this, as it does not require an entirely green background and it also has a better "depth perception" (those old games simply placed you in a 2d field).
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 3:15pm |
DonaJourneyman
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Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Fnord (20 NOV 2010 2:30pm)
Oh, and by the way, does anyone remember the old green screen (type) games that were seen in certain arcade halls in the early-mid 90s? You would stand in front of a screen (the ones I saw were actually grey), with a camera filming you from the front, and a TV showing you what was going on in the game (and where in the game you were standing). Kinect seem to be a more advanced version of this, as it does not require an entirely green background and it also has a better "depth perception" (those old games simply placed you in a 2d field).
That sounds really interesting! I've never even heard of these green screen type of games.
There have already been reported problems with Kinect. It doesn't recognise dark-skinned people well. Microsoft said it's a problem with lighting and the way Kinect recognises it. I prefer to play my games in the dark, so there you go, another downside.
It's an interesting piece of technology, but I believe it still needs a lot of work... and a night vision camera.
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 3:54pm |
Igor HardyIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | Kinect is definitely a cool gadget and a great thing to make money on, but I'm not sure if it will have any real impact on the essence of game design (which is what personally interests me the most).
It seems to me using Kinect to play a game is something akin to watching a film in 3D - there's a new dimension added to the audience's controls/perception, yet the actual game/film stays exactly the same.
Covering independent adventure games in [URL=http://hardydev.com/][B]A Hardy Developer's Journal[/B][/URL]
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 4:03pm |
HalcyonSchattenjger
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Status : Offline | I haven't embraced mobile gaming, except for very simple waiting-in-line kinds of distractions. Plus, I don't like to squint. I'm a big-screen guy for my games and movies (although the "big screen" I'm talking about is my monitor). Putting myself in a game ruins the fantasy for me.
I had a Wii as well and grew weary of it quickly, plus I hurt my shoulder playing Tiger Woods golf! Repetitive motion injury, AKA out of shape.
3D gaming on phones and other devices looks cool and I can't wait to see where it goes. I probably won't go with it, unless someone can push me around in my desk chair Although, as much hype as 3D is getting these days, am I wrong in thinking that the public's interest is only luke warm? Maybe it is a matter of price.
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 4:23pm |
FnordSchattenjger
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Status : Offline | That sounds really interesting! I've never even heard of these green screen type of games.
They were, to be perfectly honest, not very good. The two that they had over here were very simple, in one you would catch/dodge objects falling from the sky, and the hit detection was quite bad, and in the other one, you were supposed to dodge objects that came from behind, but the problem was that you covered such a large portion of the screen that it was hard to actually see the objects, but that might simply mean that you were supposed to stand further from the camera. And there was always someone who had to stick their hands into the playing area, and thus ruining the whole game, and he/she would "touch" all the objects. Much like early VR games, it was more of a cool concept than an actually working system for playing games (early VR games were quite horrible).
Come to think of it, none of these "revolutionary" concepts that we see in games today are actually new. A wiimote is little more than a working power glow, technology wise, and there is more than 20 years between the two.
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 4:58pm |
Lucien21Guild Master
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Status : Offline | Kinetic is a gimmick that will do absolutely nothing for the adventure game genre.
I can't see any developers using it.
Dear Diary, My teenage angst bullsh*t now has a bodycount.
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| 20 NOV 2010 at 8:11pm |
DonaJourneyman
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Status : Offline | Originally Posted By TAS (20 NOV 2010 4:03pm)
I haven't embraced mobile gaming, except for very simple waiting-in-line kinds of distractions. Plus, I don't like to squint. I'm a big-screen guy for my games and movies (although the "big screen" I'm talking about is my monitor). Putting myself in a game ruins the fantasy for me.
I had a Wii as well and grew weary of it quickly, plus I hurt my shoulder playing Tiger Woods golf! Repetitive motion injury, AKA out of shape.
3D gaming on phones and other devices looks cool and I can't wait to see where it goes. I probably won't go with it, unless someone can push me around in my desk chair Although, as much hype as 3D is getting these days, am I wrong in thinking that the public's interest is only luke warm? Maybe it is a matter of price.
I was addicted to mobile games when I got a new phone (a Nokia Prism - it's kinda old now, released in July 2007) but like you said, they are only waiting-in-line kind of games. Or, errm, trying to pass the time in that boring class for me...
3D? Sure, the hype will fade away. It's far from perfect, especially for people who wear glasses or have eye problems. I haven't seen anything in 3D yet and I'm scared to because I easily get motion sick. All I have to do is play a first-person game for 10 minutes and I'll be sick for the rest of the day. I don't even want to think about what would happen after watching a 3D movie :/
Fnord, thanks for explaining that! Well, each idea is built upon an older idea. I wonder how far in the past we could go with motion controlled games
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| 21 NOV 2010 at 8:12pm |
Igor HardyIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | I might have underestiamted the power of Kinect - here's a great video showing how much it adds to the experience of playing a game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo
Covering independent adventure games in [URL=http://hardydev.com/][B]A Hardy Developer's Journal[/B][/URL]
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| 21 NOV 2010 at 8:49pm |
DonaJourneyman
Posts : 801
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Status : Offline | Oh my god, brb, getting Xbox and Kinect!!!
...or perhaps I should just rent a movie. Hmmm.
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| 22 NOV 2010 at 5:53pm |
Intense DegreeIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | Originally Posted By IgorHardy (21 NOV 2010 8:12pm)
I might have underestiamted the power of Kinect - here's a great video showing how much it adds to the experience of playing a game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWbLOFGSEDo
Hah! So kinect is for serious gamers after all...!
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| 22 NOV 2010 at 7:07pm |
Lady KestrelGuild Master
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Location: US, NJ
Status : Offline | Ah, yes, that video is a fine example of an adventure game, isn't it? :
"Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?"
-Rabindranath Tagore
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| 22 NOV 2010 at 10:51pm |
loobilooPrivate Detective
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Location: UK
Status : Offline | I can't see the 'Revolutionary KINECT' affecting adventure games at all. I think the physical interactive aspects that have already been introduced through Wii, PS3 etc with sports, music & dance games are a world apart from AGs.
I have experienced some of the interactive games on some of the consols, am impressed by the technology & they are enjoyable on occasion. But the games don't give me the depth of enjoyment I get from an adventure game & I wouldn't like to see that technology introduced into them as it would just change the nature of them! ....... besides, I'm far too lazy!
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| 23 NOV 2010 at 12:25pm |
Intense DegreeIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | Originally Posted By LadyKestrel (22 NOV 2010 7:07pm)
Ah, yes, that video is a fine example of an adventure game, isn't it? :
With all respect Lady K, I don't think that the video is meant to be, or is cited as, a comment on Adventure Games on Kinect, but rather on Kinect itself.
It made me laugh anyway!
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| 23 NOV 2010 at 2:05pm |
CulturaJourneyman
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Status : Offline | Well, how about actually walking down the forest of RiVen instead of clicking? I think that would most def enhance the experience....
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| 23 NOV 2010 at 2:48pm |
DonaJourneyman
Posts : 801
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Status : Offline | Only if I had a screen that covers my entire wall to make me feel like I'm actually there
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| 23 NOV 2010 at 3:14pm |
CulturaJourneyman
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Location: NL, Amersfoort
Status : Offline | well, with 3D tv now being introduced here in Europe and flatscreens getting cheaper by the minute, that shouldn't be far off......
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| 23 NOV 2010 at 8:27pm |
loobilooPrivate Detective
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Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Cultura (23 NOV 2010 2:05pm)
Well, how about actually walking down the forest of RiVen instead of clicking? I think that would most def enhance the experience....
...if you could do that in any adventure game, I agree, it would definitely enhance the experience especially, as Dona suggested, you had an entire wall to feel like you were actually there. I can see also the health benefits to that as instead of being sat still in front of your PC you would be exercising too while playing the game. But, I play games for relaxation & I think the 'entire wall' + 3D surround experience graphically without me having to move would be enough for me! After a hard days work I don't want to work more! [smiley=laughing.gif]
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 2:15am |
CrisGerSchattenjger
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Status : Offline | It will do nothing.
I am sorry to say this seems yet another step to total entropy..ie doing nothing. I dont think it is healthy for people to surrender more and more real connection to events, actions and results. People who have grown up with the instant or near instant gratification of high speed digital tech and modern hyper computerization seem to be more and more detached from the consequences of their actions....just interested in immediate results.
So i would say this is a very bad thing.....and doubt it will have any impact at all.
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 10:45pm |
BWiegeleIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Offline | As a gamer and as a developer I think the potential of Kinect is amazing. Between the use of gestures and voice commands it opens up a whole new world!
Imagine this:
You're playing an AG and a scene takes place in an old burial ground you're not digging in. You come across artifacts and use your actual hands to rub away dust or dirt to discover hidden treasure. A lamp? You rub it for good luck to discover a genie! He grants you a wish of eternal life, wealth or health... you just say what you want and that leads into a whole other adventure!
Being able to physically interact is such a powerful tool! I hope Kinect does really well because it'd be an amazing technology as games get better for it!
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 10:53pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
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Status : Offline | Originally Posted By BWiegele (26 NOV 2010 10:45pm)
As a gamer and as a developer I think the potential of Kinect is amazing. Between the use of gestures and voice commands it opens up a whole new world!
Imagine this:
You're playing an AG and a scene takes place in an old burial ground you're not digging in. You come across artifacts and use your actual hands to rub away dust or dirt to discover hidden treasure. A lamp? You rub it for good luck to discover a genie! He grants you a wish of eternal life, wealth or health... you just say what you want and that leads into a whole other adventure!
Being able to physically interact is such a powerful tool! I hope Kinect does really well because it'd be an amazing technology as games get better for it!
All very well, but I won't be holding my breath waiting for that technology to be applied to adventure games.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 10:53pm |
CarolineJA+ Overseer
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Status : Offline | I think I'll wait until they invent the holosuite before I start getting exciting about 3D interactive gaming.
This latest toy looks like it's only going to entertain the 5yr olds. Look how they market the Wii now - to women as a get fit aide. That went well. [smiley=yawn.gif]
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 11:39pm |
FnordSchattenjger
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Location: SE, Stockholm
Status : Offline | It is unfortunate that all of these accessories end up being marketed as kids toys/things for people who don't normally play games, in particular as that does not really reflect the games that are being sold for them. Take a look at Wii for an example, while there are a lot of junk games for that console, there are also plenty of games that would appeal to more serious "gamers", like Tenchu, Metroid, Fire emblem, Okami, the mario games, Zelda, Punch out and so on. There are even a few AGs (although most of them are simply re-makes of older AGs, the only new AG that I know of is Zack & Wiki).
Designing a game like that which BWiegele describes sadly sounds rather expensive, and AGs is a genre that companies usually don't throw a whole lot of money at. It is a shame, really, because it could help the immersion quite a bit if you had to do realistic movement in order to perform actions.
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| 26 NOV 2010 at 11:57pm |
Igor HardyIntergalactic Janitor
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Status : Online | Originally Posted By BWiegele (26 NOV 2010 10:45pm)
As a gamer and as a developer I think the potential of Kinect is amazing. Between the use of gestures and voice commands it opens up a whole new world!
Imagine this:
You're playing an AG and a scene takes place in an old burial ground you're not digging in. You come across artifacts and use your actual hands to rub away dust or dirt to discover hidden treasure. A lamp? You rub it for good luck to discover a genie! He grants you a wish of eternal life, wealth or health... you just say what you want and that leads into a whole other adventure!
What do you mean "you just say what you want"? It will only recognize the keywords that are programmed into the game - exactly the same way as in a 30 years old adventure game.
Covering independent adventure games in [URL=http://hardydev.com/][B]A Hardy Developer's Journal[/B][/URL]
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