Phil Spencer is the current Executive Vice President of Gaming at Microsoft. He is also the head of Xbox. So, it is noteworthy that he said Xbox’s greatest contribution to the gaming industry was the Kinect for the Xbox 360.
“Was motion control the way everybody should play every game? I’d say the answer to that is no, in my view,” Spencer said in an interview with Edge Magazine. “Prior to that, it’s not like everything was M-rated games, but when we started doing things like Kinect Sports and things from other developers – [like Double Fine‘s] Happy Action Theatre and the dance games –that really opened our eyes to the breadth of what the Xbox could be. I look at the accessibility work that we’ve done – whether it’s the Adaptive Controller or software work that we’ve done – and I think you can draw direct lines back to Kinect. Not specifically the device itself, but just about what a gaming platform can mean to more people. And that’s a journey we’re still on.”
Kinect is a motion-sensor-based device that allowed Xbox gamers to use their bodies as game controllers. The product was originally launched in November of 2010 for the Xbox 360.
The Profit‘s Take:
As the head of Xbox, Phil Spencer’s opinion on matters like these clearly carries some weight. I don’t think I am breaking any news here when I say the Kinect was not successful. Nobody is still using the device, and, half the time, it didn’t work at all. However, Kinect pioneered the use of motion-tracking in consumer gaming devices. The hardware and its functionality were truly ground-breaking from a consumer sense when it came out.
(All information was provided by Video Games Chronicle)