Kinect Message Board older than one year ago

Kinect Sports and Dance Central have reached 3 million and 2.5 million unit sales, respectively, says Microsoft's Michael Johnson, global marketing director for Kinect games, told us at Gamescom earlier today. Dance Central has performed stronger in North America, while Kinect Sports has found a larger audience in Europe.

Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg called the two games Kinect's "breakout hits" for the publisher when he announced back in January the titles had reached a million sales in the US. The Kinect device surpassed 10 million units globally in March.

So, it probably comes as no coincidence that both franchises will receive sequels this year. Dance Central 2 talks to the hand this October, while Kinect Sports: Season 2 has a retail field day on October 25.

In response to troubling reports that Japanese tech retailers had begun reducing the amount of shelf space they're allotting for the Xbox 360, Microsoft Europe's Chris Lewis confirmed the company has no intention of giving up on the market. "No, of course we're not pulling out," Lewis explained in a recent interview with Eurogamer.

Lewis said that the going is somewhat tough overseas. "It's a challenging market. We are up against very strong competition there." He added, "We're very respectful of what Sony and Nintendo do and where they've come from and what they bring," but thinks the Kinect will help penetrate the nation's motion-control-friendly consumer base. Now, if only they could simultaneously reach the giant mech-combat community as well. Oh wait! They totally are.

#gamescom Microsoft isn't kidding around when it comes to a Gamescom presence. The company's booth is enormous, encompassing everything from Kinect bubbles to Forza demo stations to the largest bank of computers playing Age of Empires I've ever seen. More »

#riseofnightmares Having enlightened us on the control scheme for Rise of Nightmares, the zombie-genre M-rated Kinect game, Sega seems to understand that for this genre on this device, people aren't so much interested in story, just wielding virtual chainsaws to rip apart the undead. Hence the peppy elevator music and ironic tone in the game's latest Gamescom trailer. More »

In June, after nearly six years on store shelves, Microsoft finally managed to crack the 1.5 million unit milestone for the Xbox 360 in Japan. To put that number into perspective, the 3DS just hit 1.5 million units sold after just six months ... and the 3DS is considered to be selling so poorly that Nintendo's CEO took a 50% pay cut. So it's not surprising to read Edge's report that Japanese retailers are finally giving up on the Xbox.

Edge cites Media Create data which puts Microsoft's year-to-date 360 sales in Japan at 46.7% lower than they were at the same period last year. Adding insult to that sales injury is the fact that the 360's last "high-profile Japanese exclusive" Idolmaster 2 will be ported to the PlayStation 3. Edge reports that "Geo, the nation's largest specialist retailer, is drastically scaling back its Xbox 360 business" while "staff at electronics retailer Yamada Denki in Ikebukuro, Tokyo, confirmed that the company is removing hardware and software from the majority of its stores nationwide."

Of course, Xbox 360 systems and games will still be available online, and Edge writes, "it is our understanding that Amazon now handles a substantial proportion of Japanese Xbox 360 software sales." But without a solid retail presence for the Xbox 360, Microsoft may have a difficult time finding shelf space for its next console, expected to be released in the next several years. Even without retail support, don't expect to see Microsoft abandon the strategic Japanese market. As long as Sony, Nintendo, and Japanese publishers exist, Microsoft will work to gain traction in that market.

We don't know if "Monster Mash" is actually in Dance Central 2, or if there's even a real dance associated with it. The point we were trying to make, ever so awkwardly, is that the Kinect dancing sequel will be released in October, just before Halloween. That's ... when you'd normally hear that song. Never mind.

Harmonix announced at Gamescom today that Dance Central 2 will be out October 21 in Europe and Asia, October 25 in North America, and October 27 in Japan.

The developer also revealed new features, including full voice integration, allowing you to operate the in-game menus and set up the updated "Break it Down" practice mode with voice commands. Four "dance crews" allow players to pick a faction and play through "crew challenges."

13 new songs were also announced. See the new song list after the break. Just a heads-up: it totally includes Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff." And the Numa Numa song.

#kinectdisneylandadventures Kinect: Disneyland Adventures, which appears to be a surprisingly good game, finally has a release date: November 15, the target date for people buying stuff for Christmas. More »

We've seen people do some pretty awesome stuff with the Kinect that expands the peripheral's applications beyond the realm of controlling games, but we've yet to see anything that matches the wide-reaching implications of Microsoft Research's KinectFusion HQ concept.

Using the Kinect's dual cameras, KinectFusion HQ can construct an accurate, high-quality 3D representation of an entire room in a matter of seconds. The longer the Kinect has to look at a specific object, the more detailed that object then becomes; able to accurately scan and render millimeter differences in texture.

Once the room is rendered, the model can then be interacted with in real time, which the above (oddly silent) tech demo demonstrates in increasingly wild and mind-blowing ways. Since the Kinect is typically thought of as a stationary object, it will be interesting to see how this technology may eventually be implemented into gaming, since its primary functionality relies on moving the unit around the space you're scanning.

If you're in the market for an Xbox, and also happen to be a fan of fingerprints all over your stuff shiny things, you'd better get a move on: Major Nelson has announced on his blog that all 250GB Xbox 360 models will be transitioning away from their historically glossy finishes in favor of the 4GB's matte-black finish.

The updated units will start arriving on store shelves "over the coming weeks," and aside from possible gloss finishes on forthcoming limited edition consoles, your local retailer's current stock of 'boxes appear to be the last of the breed. Now, if only a matte-black Kinect existed, we could eradicate smudges from our living rooms all together.

Using a Kinect sensor and a series of Arduino motors, modern artists Jan M. Sieber and Ralph Kistler have created the greatest thing ever: a stuffed monkey which you control with your own movements. Just click past the jump, dummy. You're wasting valuable monkey-watching time.

In July 2010, on the back of the newly redesigned Xbox 360 and shelf-clearing sales on the old model, Microsoft enjoyed one of its strongest months of non-holiday console sales ever. So while the Xbox 360 managed to best its console counterparts this July, it was also "the first month that the Xbox 360 saw a year-over-year decline since December 2009." That fact doesn't bother Microsoft product manager David Dennis, who told Joystiq, "If you actually jump back two years and look at what the typical run-rate is in the middle of the summer, it's pretty close. We're actually a little above where it was."

Considering the first Xbox console only enjoyed a four-year lifespan before the Xbox 360 arrived on the scene, Microsoft doesn't have a lot of institutional knowledge to rest on when it comes to maintaining a vibrant platform late in a console's lifecycle. But six years in, and the Xbox 360 has managed to reinvent itself thanks to Kinect. "Console transitions are expensive," Dennis said. "They're expensive for platform companies like ourselves and they're expensive for the third parties that have to learn new programming languages and learn new architectures."

If you tend to stick to the trees of Strength and Skill in the Fable series, then you are going to be pretty out of your element in the series' next, Kinect-based installment, Fable: The Journey. In an interview with OXM, Peter Molyneux explained players' bag of tricks would be limited to strictly magic. He added, "We could have done melee weapons, but the one thing I hate about melee weapons, and guns as well, is that the human brain is encoded to expect recoil from those things."

Molyneux said that satisfying that expectation of physical feedback was necessary, adding that "visuals and the sound isn't enough." It's that weakness that makes the game's robust magic system work -- Molyneux explained, "The thing about magic is there's nothing encoded in your mind about how it should feel." That's true! The only preconception we have in mind about magic is that it probably requires a lot of gesticulation; something we know for a fact the Kinect excels at.

Bounced your booty through the entire Dance Central catalog? Fret not, for Harmonix has announced three new tracks are headed to the game as DLC. James Brown's "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, Pt. 1," Sean Paul's "Get Busy" and Lloyd's "Get It Shawty" can be downloaded for 240 MS Points ($3) each come August 16.

These tracks are the latest in a slow trickle of DLC that has supplemented the game since its launch alongside Microsoft's Kinect peripheral back in November.

#kinect No. But once you're done laughing, admire the bravery. You can catch glimpses of it behind his wry smirk. More »

#fruitninja I finally hooked up the Kinect camera to my Xbox 360 in the new home this weekend. It wasn't to play Child of Eden, which I've heard is great. It wasn't to play a bit more Dance Central, which I know is great. It was to cut fruit. More »

It's rare that we feel the need to warn our readers about their safety when writing up product announcements, but in the case of Activision's announcement this afternoon of a Kinect-enabled Cabela's game, we thought it might be necessary. Cabela's Hunting Party will launch this coming quarter (sometime before the end of September) alongside less potentially life-threatening titles like X-Men Destiny and the just announced Call of Duty: Black Ops "Rezurrection" DLC.

As the game was only briefly mentioned in an investor release, we can't be sure just how it uses Kinect in conjunction with the simulation hunting aspect of usual Cabela's titles, but we're cautiously interested in finding out. Regardless, we encourage people to remove any firearms from their home before allowing Cabela's Hunting Party in.

#kinectdisneylandadventures Shortly after I air-hugged a virtual Mickey Mouse and before I realized that Disneyland Adventures is a love letter to pre-Pixar, pre-CGI, hand-drawn Disney Animation, I decided that this fall's big Disney Kinect game is my most anticipated video game for Microsoft's hands-free controller. More »

Among the dozen or so games strewn about New York City's Museum of Modern Art (during last week's Kill Screen-curated "Arcade" event) two titles had their playable debuts: Eric Zimmerman and Nathalie Pozzi's "Starry Heavens" ("a physical game of power and betrayal"), as well as Matt Boch and Ryan Challinor's "Pxl Pushr" ("something akin to a full-bodied theremin blended with a puzzle game"). Considering what the two freshman entries were up against -- critically acclaimed games like Limbo, Canabalt, and Echochrome -- it was impressive that both games had lengthy lines throughout the evening.

I mean no offense when I say this, but Pxl Pusher looks like what would've happened if Kinect technology had existed in the Coleco Vision days. In the same way that your Dad's sweet 1973 Lacoste track jacket still looks totally rad, so does Pxl Pushr. The bizarre look is both a measure of the dev duo's style -- their day jobs are as designers at Harmonix -- and of the short-term development cycle. "Over the past four weeks-ish we've been messing around building this game," Boch explained.

In Pxl Pushr, one player places dots on an iPad, while another player attempts to catch as many dots as possible by using the contortions of their body (via Kinect). The player contorting their body is scored on how many pixels he/she is able to "push" versus the ones they miss. It's a simple concept for sure, but one that had many attendees smiling while making very silly poses. Not that the crowd's reaction was foreign to Boch and Challinor, two gentlemen who spend their working hours with Dance Central 2.

#riseofnightmares I get the point; this is an M-rated Kinect game. Can you please stop throwing blood all over me, Sega? Oh god, it's in my mouth. More »

Inhale. Exhale. Raise your arms, inhale. Exhale, lift one leg above your head, dislocate your shoulder and sing "God Save the Queen." Or not. Deepak Chopra's Leela wants to calm your mind, body and soul in a trippy THQ video game, as explained by his guru-ness in this new video.

[Thanks, Amit!]

#kinectstarwars We played Kinect Star Wars a couple of times last month at E3. Our own Owen Good wasn't impressed. Neither was Brian Crecente. I got my chance this week and shot some video to give you an extra look at the game. More »

#thegunstringer More »

It always seemed kind of weird that Virtual Air Guitar Company's Kung-Fu Live, a game about performing real punches and kicks in front of a camera to control an on-screen representation of yourself, wasn't a Kinect game, going instead to PSN with PlayStation Eye support.

Now, the game is coming to Kinect, with a new name: Kung-Fu High Impact, and two new publishers: Ignition Entertainment in America, and Black Bean Games in PAL territories. Watch for it to be released worldwide in November, at which point it'll begin watching you.

#leela How do you make an Xbox 360 game out of Deepak Chopra's spiritual beliefs and practices? You don't, not exactly. You make Leela which is half a collection of motion-controlled mini-games associated with different chakras—points of spiritual energy located in a person's body—and half a training tool to meditate better. More »

#kinectimals Kinect launch title Kinectimals was a fine showcase for Microsoft's motion-sensing technology, but it was all about cat. They should have just called it Kinecticats. This problem, like many others, has been fixed via liberal application of bears. More »

#hasbrofamilygamenight We can't blame or credit the new, more physical version of Connect Four on Microsoft's Kinect sensor. No, the TV show Hasbro Family Game Night is responsible for that. That's where the basketball version of Connect Four came from. More »

A company called Impulse Technology has filed suit against Microsoft and several game companies over the Kinect hardware and software, claiming that the controller-free motion tracking violates its patents for "System and method for tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space," and "Education system challenging a subject's physiologic and kinesthetic systems to synergistically enhance cognitive function."

Microsoft is named for its Kinect hardware, of course, but other companies are included in the suit because they made games that use the Kinect to track body movements.

According to Patent Arcade, Impulse is seeking not just money, but a permanent injunction -- which, were it to go through, would force Kinect hardware and software to be shelved in the US.

#watchthis There are no post-production effects added to this video, everything, happening on singer Olga Bell's face is happening in real-time, we're told. More »

Microsoft released its Q4 earnings for fiscal year 2011 today. Being a video game site, we're going to focus on the company's Entertainment & Devices Division responsible for, amongst other things, the Xbox 360 (a device primarily built for entertainment). In the three-month period ended June 30th, the Big M shipped 1.7 million Xbox 360 units, compared to a measly 1.5 million the previous year. But increased console sales don't account for all of the Xbox 360 platform's 29% revenue growth; Microsoft also has "higher Xbox Live revenue" to thank.

For the year, Xbox 360 platform revenue grew $2.7 billion or 48%, thanks to "increased volumes of Xbox 360 consoles, sales of Kinect sensors, and higher Xbox Live revenue." Microsoft shipped 13.7 million consoles during fiscal '11 versus 10.3 million in fiscal '10. That success has propelled revenue growth at the entire Entertainment & Devices Division 30% for Q4 and 45% for the year (nice going, Windows Phone 7). Revenues for all of Microsoft were up 8% for the period, year-over-year, with the company singling out "the Xbox 360 entertainment platform" as one of the primary catalysts for growth.

With the top-selling home console in North America for 12 of the last 13 months, according to NPD data, and a runaway hit in Kinect, it's easy to see why Xbox 360 is doing so well for Microsoft.

#microsoft In early 2010, Xbox Japan launched a new mascot, Sanrokumaru (literally, "360"), a businessman with an Xbox logo for a head. A year and a half later, he seems to have vanished. Poof! More »