14 DAY TRIAL // Many gamers are still disappointed that they will also have to pay for a Kinect motion tracking system when they buy an Xbox One home console, but the team at Microsoft handling launch believes that actually using the new technology will lead to a change of attitude.
Albert Penello, who is the planning director at the company, tells The Official Xbox Magazine that this time around the Kinect experience is fully integrated with the rest of the hardware, something that did not happen for the first generation of the tech.
He states, “the problem is it’s an accessory right? And whenever you have an accessory, you know, as a guy who’s worked on platforms now for three generations, there’s always a pro and a con to an accessory.”
The fact that Kinect was added post launch meant that developers could never be sure whether a player owned the device in order to take advantage of any unique features.
Penello adds, “And when you see the features that the new Kinect can do – we just said, you know what, like let’s take that decision of having to make that trade off away and the console will support it, it’s native, it was engineered for it.”
When the Xbox One was first announced, Microsoft maintained that the Kinect was integral to the new device and it would always be active.
Since then, the company has ceded to the demands of the potential customers and has admitted that the sensors of the motion tracking device will only be activated when they are used by a service or a game.
New technology means that the second version of Kinect will be able to detect smaller motions and will allow players to control more types of experiences.
The Xbox One is expected to be launched in the final days of November.