Fruit Ninja Kinect Message Board

Halfbrick announced today that Fruit Ninja Kinect has reached a million sales, solidifying it as a very successful "console experiment" for the company. The company announced a month ago at DICE 2012 that sales had surpassed a half million.

Phil Larsen, chief marketing officer at Halfbrick, also told us that the Jetpack Joyride 1.3 update is coming this April. It will add 15 gadgets that are "kinda like perks," which players can choose at the beginning of the round to assist.

Gadgets include Air Barry shoes, allowing Barry to jump instead of glide up. Along with the "Freeze o Matic," which turns Barry into a sliding ice block when he crashes for extra distance. There are also magnets which allow Barry to collect coins. Still no item that allows you to actually stop playing Jetpack Joyride.

Australian developer Halfbrick is flying high on the success of its Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride franchises. Chief Marketing Officer Phil Larsen told us at the DICE conference in Las Vegas today that Fruit Ninja Kinect has reached a half-million sales and has been a very successful console experiment for the company. The company also plans to continue supporting Fruit Ninja on iOS with more updates rather than cannibalize its momentum with a sequel.

As for Jetpack Joyride, which went free to play in mid-December, Larsen notes the game has seen significant growth since the change.

"There's an update coming in the next month," Larsen said about Jetpack Joyride. "It's the biggest one we've done so far."

He told us the previously $1 app reached about 1 million paid sales before going free and has since seen 13 million downloads as a free product. He estimates about 5-10 percent of customers will spend at least a dollar on the app through its in-game store, so revenue has been higher since the game went "free."

Imagine if you were told something was free, but moments later found out you’d actually been charged $10 for the transaction. It’s an easy situation to imagine for an issue that currently exists at Xbox.com but won't soon enough.

If you’re a frequent user of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service, chances are that when you arrive at Xbox.com, you’re greeted by a dancing Avatar with paid-for clothing you said you’d never, ever buy--but then you saw Rocky stuff.

That’s not always the case, and for many, there’s an equal chance they’re not logged in.

If you don't have enough points in your account, you'll get saved from this story's heartbreak.

One of the more popular uses of Xbox.com is queueing up downloads through your phone, iPad or computer. Want to try out the latest Xbox Live Arcade release? Heard about a new game on the Indie Games marketplace? Queue it up, and have the Xbox 360 download it while you’re away. It’s brilliant, easy, and super useful.

Both sections offer free, playable demos, too, and that's where the problem comes in.

If you’re logged out of Xbox.com right now and click on “Try Demo,” of, say, Fruit Ninja Kinect, you’re then presented with a login screen. After typing in your Windows Live ID information, the bubbly Avatar appears. Soon, a pop-up window shows up, displaying a confirmation page to make sure everything's a-okay.

In the process of logging in, however, Xbox.com will mysteriously switch from “Try Demo” to “Buy Game.” One costs money, the other doesn't. It’s reasonable to wonder why one would just click “Confirm Purchase” without careful reading, except that “Confirm Purchase” is the same button that shows up when you want to download a trial version, too. “Confirm Purchase” is the generic term used on the site when approving a download in all cases.

Anyone who’s used to hitting “Confirm Purchase” for both paid and free content on XBL could reasonably click without a moment’s hesitation and suddenly find themselves with 800 (or more) Microsoft Points tossed out the door.

Giant Bomb user itsnottaken first alerted me to the issue, and I was able to verify it for myself. You should be able to make the same issue appear on your own account, and there’s a video captured by itsnottaken, as well.

Fortunately, Xbox.com users won’t have to worry about their aimless clicking for long. I contacted Microsoft about the issue yesterday, and have since been told the web team is working on a solution.

“We are aware of this issue and the team is actively working to resolve it,” said a Microsoft spokesperson over email. “We appreciate your patience and apologize for any inconvenience.”

It’s still an issue for the time being, though, so mind your mouse button.

A new Christmas DLC pack for Fruit Ninja Kinect is now available for free on Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade. The pack includes a Santa's Workshop, Snow Globes to smash and a Candy Cane Blade. More »

#kinect Looking for the perfect gift for the gamer in your family? That's nice. In the meantime, check out this Kinect Sensor Holiday Bundle for the Xbox 360, combining three games and Microsoft's magic rectangle for one low price. More »

Nothing is more important in Fruit Ninja than freshness, which is why Halfbrick has announced more DLC for the Kinect iteration of the produce bisection game. The "Space Capsule" DLC adds a new "Star Chart" background, a new player silhouette style called the "Stellar Shadow," and an on-screen sword called the "Comet Blade."

What it doesn't add -- and this is a massive missed opportunity -- is bags of those freeze-dried strawberries that are sold as "astronaut food." We could totally be cutting futuristic fruits right now! The space food-free DLC is available now for $2.

Not feeling powerful enough during your sessions of fruit mutilation (or, if you will, fruitilation) on Fruit Ninja Kinect? You're insatiable -- but you're also the target demographic for tomorrow's DLC update. Titled "Storm Season," the content will add a new "Storm Castle" background, "The Rain Man Shadow" silhouette and, following the theme, the "Lightning Bolt Blade."

The DLC will run purchasers 160 Microsoft Points ($2), will add three new Achievements to the title for a bonus of 50 'cheevo points, and will finally let you figure out what happens when an apple gets struck by a bolt of lightning. Points. Points happen.

4 out of 5

Fruit Ninja Kinect represents a unique new vector for games that originally caught on--and in Fruit Ninja’s case, caught on pretty big--on Apple’s iOS platform. Though a few mobile-born games have graduated to the PC and other downloadable platforms, Fruit Ninja Kinect is the first to try to translate those touchscreen controls to the touch-free controls of Kinect, and frankly, I can think of few better candidates. The simple fingertip swiping motions of Fruit Ninja scale up to a full-body experience with ease, and while some might balk at the price difference between platforms, Kinect owners hungry for something, anything of quality will find plenty of curiously cathartic, fruit-annihilating fun for their $10 here.

The idea is simple, and, admittedly, kind of stupid, which is OK, since it’s just a silly contrivance for the underlying mechanics. Pieces of whole fruit--watermelons, apples, bananas, kiwis, pears, strawberries, oranges, lemons, limes, coconuts...wait, are coconuts really fruit?--are lobbed up from the bottom of the screen, and you perform strong, decisive swiping motions across them to slice them in half, ninja-style, before they’re reclaimed by gravity’s clutches. The game encourages economy of movement by awarding bonus multipliers for slicing multiple pieces of fruit with a single swipe, and depending on which mode you’re playing, you’ll also have to avoid score-penalizing or game-ending bombs that get tossed up along with the rest of the fruit salad, or go after bonus fruit that can slow down time, multiply your score, or turn the whole screen into a fruit frenzy for a limited time.

Fruit Ninja Kinect gives you a point of reference for where, exactly, you need to be swinging your arms around like lunatic being attacked by invisible assailants by casting your silhouette on the screen. Whether or not you’ve played Fruit Ninja on a touchscreen before, it takes some getting used to on Kinect, as it favors quick, forceful movements, and in my experience, it can be touchy about players being either too close to and too far from the Kinect. Really excelling at Fruit Ninja Kinect requires enough coordination to use both hands, though flashy, limber players can make use of their feet as well. I’ll admit, I found Fruit Ninja novel on my iPhone, and there’s something to be said for the increase in scale when playing it on the iPad, but going from using your fingertip to using your whole body in Fruit Ninja Kinect ups the level of engagement by an order of magnitude. Unlike other Kinect titles, the control feels relatively sharp and precise--just like a ninja should, fruit or otherwise.

Three modes make up the game’s single-player experience. Classic mode starts slow and slowly cranks up the number of pieces of fruit tossed up at once, with a three-strike system for fruit that’s allowed to fall off the screen un-sliced, plus game-ending bombs to keep you on your toes. Arcade mode does away with the three-strikes model, and replaces the nihilistic bombs with less-punishing bombs that just penalize your score, instead using a time limit to throttle your score, and introduces the bonus fruit to help you juice it up. Every Arcade session also ends with a pomegranate that, if sliced, causes everything to go super-slo-mo, giving you the opportunity to goose your score by rapidly and repeatedly slicing the fruit as fast as you can. It’s no coincidence that this is both the most physically exhausting and satisfying moments that Fruit Ninja Kinect has to offer, though that's not to say that the rest of the game won't make you break a sweat on its own. Zen mode uses a similar time limit, though does away with the bombs and the bonus fruit. Assuming you’ve got space in your living room, you can play local cooperate and competitive two-player modes as well. As you rack up more fruit executions, you unlock new, optional visual effects for your swiping motions, your silhouette, and the game’s background wallpaper.

Each of these modes is self-contained, in that once you finish a session, which usually lasts just a couple of minutes or less, your options are either to retry the mode you’re in, or hop back to the main menu and pursue another mode. There’s no fixed progression within any of the modes, though that’s a gap filled well by the game’s Challenge mode, which turns your friends leaderboard into a competition. If none of your friends are playing Fruit Ninja Kinect, the Challenge mode is admittedly kind of useless. If you do, though, it does a terrific job of incentivizing incrementally improving your score. Since you often have to beat the score of the player just above you on the leaderboard, success in small steps is easily obtained.

When you’re in the game, the simple motion of swiping your limbs through the air is generally quite responsive, though, as can be the case with Kinect games, it can be a little fussy about the calibration. In my experience, the only area where the swipe-based controls are consistently too touchy is in the menus, where it’s easy to accidentally select the wrong menu option with idle gesticulations.

While the stereotypical karate dojo sound effects can come off as a little canned and cheesy, the squishy splats when you successfully slice a piece of fruit add to the game’s inherent satisfaction, particularly when paired with the accompanying juicy splatters against the background.

More than just a simple proof of concept, Fruit Ninja Kinect is a competent debut for Kinect games on Xbox Live Arcade, and it’s such a good fit that I have a hard time believing it will be outdone anytime soon. Kinect owners who understand the strengths and weaknesses of the hardware shouldn’t hesitate to pick up this fun, spazzy title.

It is good to chop fruit with your hands.

That's likely to be my very dumbest thesis for the remainder of my games-reviewing career, but let's face it: Fruit Ninja Kinect is an astonishingly dumb game. Its unswerving singlemindedness sets a new standard for simplicity: The game oscillates between binary states of chopping fruit and waiting to chop more fruit, with little extraneous cruft to pad the two. There is fruit, and then you chop it, and then the fruit -- in a burst of citrus and points -- is gone!

Such a single-faceted premise would be a mark of death for any game, even a budget-priced downloadable title. Luckily for Halfbrick, it is good to chop fruit with your hands.

Rather than simply recounting my experience with Fruit Ninja Kinect -- part of the upcoming Summer of Arcade -- why don't we turn this preview into an interactive experience? Please play along at home.

First, flatten your hands into the standard "Karate chop" shape. Curl your arms at the elbows so that your fingers are now pointed forward. For a more visceral experience, set a piece of fruit -- a banana, perhaps -- on a surface in front of you. Use a cutting board if it helps complete the illusion. Alternately, if you're in the position to give a friend or significant other a sensual massage, have them lie down in front of you.

Now, when you (and your partner, if applicable) are ready, start chopping your hands up and down like a maniac.

Embrace your inner ninja and take out your aggression on a few bad apples.

If you played Halfbrick's Fruit Ninja on iPhone already, then the general setup of Fruit Ninja Kinect should be pretty familiar. Across a flat screen is tossed virtual fruit. It flies up from the bottom and from the sides of the screen and arcs across the center, giving you a chance to slice it apart for points. It's a simple concept and offered in short session of gameplay, but tends to be addictively replayable by luring you into thinking you can always do better...