Why is Analyze Exclusive to Kinect?

Games Other Halo
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When I saw this thread I tought it would be full of wise consumers who can differentiate an offer from a marketing trick. Instead I saw a bunch of consumers who seem like zombies that would buy anything as long as it is in some rather loose way related to their favorite video game franchise.

I mean really, the point is not that the analyze feature would be so super cool, but more that there simply is no reason why it couldn’t be implemented to support controller.

The truth about Kinect is that Microsoft isn’t doing well with it. This far they have only came up with games that copy Wii games. So instead of trying to come up with something actually revolutionary, they are trying to get people buy Kinect by forcing it into their core franchises that don’t benefit from Kinect over a regular controller.

So why should we complain? If we just welcomed every single marketing trick that was product of bad decision with open hands, faster than we could realize, the business world would have taken all the money out of our pockets with no evolution being happened in the industry.

You see, this situation is comparable to a restaurant with bad food. If we just went to eat to that restaurant daily and never complained about the food, the quality of the food would never improve. If we realized that we are being fooled, we could demand better food and stop eating in the restaurant before we get it. This would force the restaurant to make better food.

This means that if we are to accept every Kinect marketing trick from Microsoft, nothing decent will ever spawn from it. If we complain instead and don’t buy Kinect until it gets decent games or Kinect implementations, Microsoft will need to start giving us something worth of our money.

So there you go. There is no reason to defend the Kinect exclusiveness of analyze mode. You’re just fooling yourself by doing it.

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We do not know the full story behind the secret doors of development. All we know is there will be a Kinect only feature. We don’t know for sure if 343 wanted to add it in there and MS said to make it kinect only, or if as some requirement Halo Anniversary had to have something Kinect related so they made someone totally nonessential to the gaming experience as the scan mode.

What we can piece together is MS most likely, either politely or through coercion, told them to add in a Kinect feature because of 343s ties to MS, and that 343 probably didn’t want to discriminate against people who do not want or cannot afford a $100-$150 device. It does stink that us who do not own a connect, due to lack of interest or personal financial restraints, cannot experience this feature BUT it isn’t essential. At least they didn’t make Halo Anniversary completely Kinect required, or where to play it only certain things like throwing grenades, reloading, etc were done with the kinect. It’s a small feature where you scan creatures and a bio pops up. It’s cool, but you can still pwn grunts and rediscover the storyline of Halo all over again without it.

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The Kinect feature in reality is just a few pictures and a bunch of text. Just like Autovista in Forza 4, you look at it once and never touch it again. If you really need all that information about the bloody Elites, it will all be on the Halo wikis days after CEA comes out.

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> The Kinect feature in reality is just a few pictures and a bunch of text. Just like Autovista in Forza 4, you look at it once and never touch it again. If you really need all that information about the bloody Elites, it will all be on the Halo wikis days after CEA comes out.

Or already in the Halo Strategy guides, or even in the Bestiarium part of the Halo 3 Legendary Edition.

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OP. I don’t know if you are stupid or lack a brain. The kinect feature adds absolutely nothing to the game. I could halopedia elite or grunt and get more knowledge about the one species then the whole of anniversary can offer. Look at forza 4. It has kinect only achievements. You are nuts if you are seriously writing this trash about it.

  1. 343 = Microsoft’s property.
  2. Kinect adds nothing new.
  3. If you don’t want to give money over don’t. We aren’t going to mourn over you.
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Microsoft owns 343 so promoting their companies own stuff isn’t bad. And it’s entirely optional and doesn’t affect gameplay at all. I doubt it would split the community just by showing off stuff in the library or not.

Also, what does ‘pulling a Bungie’ mean?

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Facedesk

343 IS OWNED BY MICROSOFT!!!

Sigh Done yelling.

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Man you folks these days have problems. It is just a little fun for kinect players so that they may utilize their purchase in some way in this game.
To say that Microsoft is trying to get sales for the kinect by 343 including this feature not only makes you look ridiculous, but makes no sense whatsoever. Get over it. You can go to halopedia and get more information on the scorpion’s history then there is in all the Halo games. Stop crying.

If you were to buy a kinect for this feature then you really need to have a long hard look at yourself in a mirror. If you already have a kinect have fun. Otherwise shut up and get over it.

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> You’re really being ridiculous, kid. It’s a trivial little feature no one really cares about. You should be thankful Microsoft didn’t make something significant Kinect-exclusive. And I gurantee you it was MS’ call, not 343’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft told them to make a Kinect-exclusive feature, and that’s the only reason the feature exists in the first place.

Agreed. Except for the “no one really cares about” part… :stuck_out_tongue:

> Because Microsoft OWNS 343, and they have the final say on everything, and get all the money, minus 343’s paychecks.

Not neccessarily. 343 just signed a contract with Microsoft, so they are working together. The term “owning them” would be exaggeration.

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>

A rather eloquent way of saying “I don’t think this is fair and I want that feature too, but I’m too cheap/poor/unable to get a Kinect, and therefore will resent 343i for making a marketing move by offering a very fractional bit more for Kinect owners.”

Nah, even that’s too eloquent. You’re really just saying “No fair! I want that too!”

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> >
>
> A rather eloquent way of saying “I don’t think this is fair and I want that feature too, but I’m too cheap/poor/unable to get a Kinect, and therefore will resent 343i for making a marketing move by offering a very fractional bit more for Kinect owners.”
>
> Nah, even that’s too eloquent. You’re really just saying “No fair! I want that too!”

Good job on not misrepresenting tsassi’s post and then ridiculing that misrepresentation in a cheap and thoughtless attempt to distract people from his actual point and the merits of that point, Jack.

Nah, that’s actually exactly what you just did.

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Pulling a Bungie would be telling MS to -Yoink- off. 343 is an MS studio, born there and will die there, and MS wanted to slap a stupid Kinect sticker on the box. That’s all there is to it.

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I honestly don’t care about analyze and I have kinect. Any info that the library offers I’m pretty sure I can find on the web.

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It gives people who own kinect a feature of their own…it’s not really that great of a feature anyway.
I don’t have a Kinect and I don’t want one, but for people who have one its something else they can get their money out of that turd of a device.

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> It gives people who own kinect a feature of their own…it’s not really that great of a feature anyway.
> I don’t have a Kinect and I don’t want one, but for people who have one its something else they can get their money out of that turd of a device.

lol. True.

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> Good job on not misrepresenting tsassi’s post and then ridiculing that misrepresentation in a cheap and thoughtless attempt to distract people from his actual point and the merits of that point, Jack.
>
> Nah, that’s actually exactly what you just did.

Circumstances of my state-of-mind may have encouraged me to be less inhibited about what I say/type/do at the time, and for that I apologize. Do I still think it’s needless complaining? Yes.

The Kinect does have good games. Your Shape Fitness Evolved actually makes working out fun and - thus far, for me - effective. Fruit Ninja is a great stress relief, and I’ve even had fun with my friends “battling” on it. Child of Eden was an interesting implementation, and I enjoyed it while I played it. I am also greatly anticipating Kinect Star Wars.

However those are all motion capture. There’s more to the Kinect than standing up and hopping around, there is also the audio capture. This is a feature of the Kinect that has been promoted, you can control your Xbox with it, and it is now seeing implementation into games. They obviously can’t add voice commands for Halo: CEA (as far as orders go,) as that wasn’t in the code. It possibly could have been added in Halo: Reach to order the marines to a certain point, but it was likely too soon. I wouldn’t be surprised if such a feature is added to Halo 4, as something you don’t need, but something that is available.

So what does Microsoft and 343i do? To warm us into this mentality of voice command features being added to games though you don’t need them to fully enjoy the game, they add a little data-collection “app” to CEA. I don’t see it as a “crap gimmick” - even though the feature will get stale after a while - I see it as warming up the pool. Oh, and the feature would get stale even if it was controller-compatible.

> Analyze Mode v2

Far Superior.

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What’s concerning is the chief argument among those who are pro-analyze: “It’s just a useless feature and you could look up the information on youtube”.

While this is more or less true (though most people don’t like the thought of missing out on something) these people are missing the point.

It’s not the actual analyze feature that’s the problem, it’s the principle behind it and the potential of what might continue to happen.

If we let MS restrict content based on peripherals it opens up the door to all manner of under handed ‘synergy’.

Imagine in Halo 4, an entire chunk of cinematic restricted to people with Kinect. Would the ‘oh it’s no big deal you could just look them up on youtube’ argument work? Imagine an entire chunk of playlists only available to people with a Windows Phone. Would you just say ‘don’t worry, it’s a feature that’ll be stale for a week’?

This isn’t about getting analyzing Halo information we probably all know anyway. The problem is that these features aren’t possible through the use of Kinect’s unique features, they’re open to people simply because they purchased Kinect.

Now. If that doesn’t set warning bells off in your head you simply aren’t a wise consumer. If you’re not bothered by this then you are in a position to take what ever treatment a company throws at you.

Now follow this through to the natural conclusion. MS is highly invested in Kinect. They are even signing up 3rd party devs to incluse Kinect support in every game no matter what genre. There’s already Kinect specific achievements in Forza. So today, it’s just a seemingly ‘useless feature’ but from here on out it’s going to get worse.

Edit: I should add, I own a Kinect and 2 XBOX consoles. I got the Kinect for my kids which they use on he second XBOX. I’m not complaining cause I’m missing out on analyze, I’m just an older dude who’s been around the block a few times and seen how companies try to push the limits of what consumers accept. I would wager that most defending MS here are too young to know any better.

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It appears the forums ate my post…

> Imagine in Halo 4, an entire chunk of cinematic restricted to people with Kinect. Would the ‘oh it’s no big deal you could just look them up on youtube’ argument work? Imagine an entire chunk of playlists only available to people with a Windows Phone. Would you just say ‘don’t worry, it’s a feature that’ll be stale for a week’?

“Slippery Slope” arguments are always funny, especially when they’re not logically applicable. Why on Earth would a cinematic of all things be restricted for Kinect users only? Or a playlist for Windows Phone users? I would wager that Halo 4’s Kinect features will be just as minor but useful. I will explain here in a bit.

> This isn’t about getting analyzing Halo information we probably all know anyway. The problem is that these features aren’t possible through the use of Kinect’s unique features

Wrong. Looking at what the Kinect can do and how it can be best implemented for an FPS, I would wager a feature being limited like this:

You know how in Halo: Reach you have Marines that will be added to your “squad”? Well, you can’t really do much with them, they just follow you around and mostly get in the way. Most players don’t even pay them any mind, going the “Lone Wolf” route. As the Kinect has a built-in voice-recognition program/software (more on this later,) an optional feature would be the ability to either vocally give orders to said marines, or to use a quick gesture feature to direct them to attack, hold ground, or move to a location. Would this Kinect-only feature affect gameplay for players without a Kinect? No, it wouldn’t. The AI is usually smart enough to recognize threats, and operates with some level of synchronicity to the player. Kinect owners would just be able to do that much more.

So why couldn’t this feature be added to Halo: CEA? Well, software is likely the hanging factor. To my understanding - I could be wrong - games that have voice commands that are able to utilize vocal commands via the microphone have that “program” built into the game; the microphone does not have this function, or it would cost much more than $20.

Halo: Combat Evolved does not have this program, and in keeping with the original code, such a function would not have been able to be implemented. Because the Kinect has voice-recognition built-in, there’s no need to add such a command function to the game itself. The Kinect recognizes a player saying “Analyze” and activates the mode, then the cursor does the rest.

“But why can’t it be mapped to the controller?” I have thought on this, and here’s why. We have several controller schemes being put in for CEA, yes, but Halo: CE also had alternate schemes. It is easy for them to keep the same coding and simply re-assign the same functions to new buttons. It is much harder - and the coding would have to be changed - to add a function not in the original game to the controller schemes. It’s easy for the Kinect to do this because the code isn’t running the voice recognition, the Kinect is. This is why it’s necessary for the Kinect to be utilized for this feature.

EDIT: Lol, \m/ 666th post! \m/

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Halo CEA, Microsoft, nor 343i are gonna make me buy a Kinect or a 3D TV.

Honestly you guys give a lot of crap about something as pointless as the scanning. All it does is tell you what you already know. EX: Elites-covenant badasses EX: Grunt- Don’t bother wasting ammo on them EX: Scorpion Tank-ladies like it.

At least there are not hiding content on the CD and then make you pay for them like Gears of War 3, Resident Evil 5, Fable 3, Mass Effect, Mortal Kombat, etc.

This stupid scan thing should not considered when asking “will i have fun playing this game?”

Get my point?

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> I got a kinect for christmas, so I really think it’s cool how there are so many sweet kinect features!
> So don’t get a kinect. You’ll be missing out on all the fun!

“All the fun” you say… lol no