If you're an Xbox One owner like me, you're probably well aware that the Kinect is a joke. You've likely found yourself over-enunciating voice commands in front of frustrated friends and family, or waving like a fish-hungry seal trying to deactivate phantom hand gestures when you're streaming video. It's not perfect. It's also a big factor in the $500 Xbox One retail price, which is itself a major factor in why Sony is winning the sales war. Cheaper is usually better in the eyes of most consumers and the Xbox One Kinect does nothing to justify its $100 price tag. Let's face facts, if it wasn't bundled with the system it's doubtful many people would buy it. The Kinect is a joke, but it doesn't have to be.
Sometimes, I like my Kinect a lot. When I'm on the computer or shoving fistfuls of korean fried chicken down my gullet (or both) I like not having to hunt down a remote to change the volume or the content on my TV. I like to give my Kinect a hearty "Hello!" whenever it recognizes me and logs my profile in automatically. I want it to do more things I like. Lately, I've said a lot of bad things about why I think the Kinect is a joke so I decided to try to be positive. I wondered what would make me WANT a Kinect. This list is based on no technical knowledge, so feel free to take to the comments section if I suggest things that are technologically impossible for the Kinect to do. but here five things that could take the Kinect from awful to awesome.
Work 100% Of The Time
It speaks to what a joke the Kinect has become that this is relegated to the "wish" category. But it feels like the Kinect will never be perfect. But if it was perfect, holy cow, it would be killer. It would seem so smart, for one thing. For every six successful voice interaction I have there are probably two bad ones in the bunch. It feels like I'm talking to a preoccupied child not a next-gen anything. Technology is alien by nature, it takes a huge leap for a human to have faith in some lifeless gadget. Which is why every piece of successful technology has a success rating in the mid-high 90s. Games are no different. I've heard plenty of lag rage in my time to know people have a low threshold for shoddy tech despite the insane stuff it's actually doing. If the Kinect worked 100 times out of 100 then I think a lot of the "Kinect is a joke" talk would go away. All we want is the thing to work as advertised. It's even worth a wish.
Customizable Voice Commands
This one falls in the "might not be technically possible" category, but if Microsoft could make the Kinect into a more customizable machine it would win the hearts and minds of many a wary consumer. Consider one of the common Xbox One troll moves:
Pretty funny, until it happens to you. I've had my console get loopy when I just say "Xbox" talking to my friends in-game. We've taken to calling it the System That Shall Not Be Named. It would be great if the Kinect allowed for customizable commands for two reasons. First, it would eliminate the trolling and derpiness already going on. Second, it would make your Kinect seem so much more personal. Even if you could just record a name besides Xbox but leave the other commands the same. imagine naming your Xbox 'Barack Obama.' How much fun is that? 'Barack Obama, snap!' 'Barack Obama, go home!' It'd be super. That doesn't even factor in the many vulgar and absurd names gamers could come up with. It would add a touch of personality to a stale peripheral while simultaneously solving one of the more annoying user errors.
Disable Hand Gestures
UPDATE: Microsoft has included this feature in the latest system update. It was not available at launch.
I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, HATE, HATE the Kinect gesture system. For starters, I have no idea how to use it. As far as I can tell it wants me to hug my TV when I need to go back a menu? It's not intuitive and, beyond that, it doesn't work the way it's supposed to. A recent patch help considerably, but the Kinect still loves to detect my hand while I'm eating food or having a conversation. then it's the same routine of trying to use the "stop" hand sign to close the menu and then, inevitably, sheepishly locating the controller and hitting 'B.' I understand that it's useful for games (although WHICH games I have no idea since any worthwhile title with Kinect commands basically just lets you voice activate menus) but it's useless the other 98 percent of the time. It would be great if there was an option to disable the gesture detection so that I could turn it on for the few games that make the most of it and disable it for when i'm shoving fistfuls of korean fried chicken down my gullet.
Kinect Games That Do More Than Rehash Wii Games
It's no secret that Nintendo pioneered this whole motion detection in the living room thing. But Microsoft continues to do what Ninten-did. Kinect does sports and fitness and family titles. ZZZZzzZZzz. Sorry, but the next-gen Kinect needs to do more than last gen's Wii. it needs titles that truly push the envelope for interactive gaming experiences. For example, the Xbox Fitness program boasts that it measures your heart rate by detecting micro-fluctuations in your skin. why not apply that tech to horror games? Imagine a Silent Hill game that notices your heart is racing and reacts by increasing the scares. Or maybe it can tell you're sitting passively and throws a jump scare at you to startle you back to attention. I'd love to play a shooter that can track where my eyes are looking and throw targets up in my blind spot. Or a button masher that forces me to hold my controller at chest level, fatiguing my arms in a way that mimics my warrior's depleted stamina. The Kinect deserves better than the flailing sports titles currently being offered.
Make It Fun By Giving It Toys
Toys are fun. The Xbox One is, despite all its fancy silicon guts, basically a toy. It's for fun. it's for entertainment. And the Kinect could be more fun if it had some fun accessories to play with. I was at PAX East a few weeks ago and had a wonderful time playing Virtua Cop. Half the fun was using the plastic light gun. Why can't Kinect have something similar? Not every shooter needs to follow the ubiquitous dual-analog COD formula. A high-res, next-gen graphics heavy rail shooter with a funky toy gun sounds like great fun to me. Or a plastic katana that you can use in a sword dueling title that vibrates when your blade strikes your opponent. Toys and accessories would add that exclusive feel the Kinect is lacking right now.
There you have it. My five big ideas that could save the Kinect from being the $100 albatross that could kill the Xbox One. The premise is simple. Turn it into something cool and we will want it. When we realize we already have it, we'll love it even more and suddenly the decision to force us to buy it will seem genius. Until then, expect to continue to hear buyer's remorse from owners who are tired of telling their system to turn off over and over and decide instead to just leave it that way.
