Why is Analyze Exclusive to Kinect?

Games Other Halo
41

> Cause Kinect is good but ignornant people fail to see that.

Oh the device is fine and dandy, nifty piece of tech…the problem is that the software that supports use of said device more often than not is found sorely lacking.

For myself, none of the Kinect titles interest me in the slightest except POSSIBLY Rise of Nightmares, but I haven’t read anything on that yet so it could very well be another forgettable.
CEA is the only game coming out that has a feature I want to use but it’s exclusive for Kinect. Even Ghost Recon Future Soldier’s “Gunsmith” feature allows the option to use either Kinect or standard controller. It’s a simple marketing ploy that’s all this is. Oh you want to analyze? Buy Kinect.

Or be smart and go to Halopedia. Heh.

42

> > My issue is that the content has been unnecessarily walled off to people without Kinect.
>
> And I will repeat something that I should quite literally put into a text document so I don’t have to type it from scratch.
>
> The Library feature is not new. The information you receive from it, you can look up on Halopedia right d*mn now. The “interactive character models” you can see in game. We know what they look like, they are not new.
>
> So why do us Kinect users defend such a useless and truthfully hollow feature which will become stale within a week? Because it’s our little slice of Halo: Anniversary. It doesn’t detract from the core game, it doesn’t really add to the core game. But it’s a way to have “Halo Fun” with the Kinect; something more than saying game commands.
>
> And what happens if the Analyze is mapped to a button? We get the short-end; we get shafted. Then it’s “Oh hey, here’s this feature for the Kinect! But it’s not really for the Kinect, because you don’t really need the Kinect to use this Kinect feature… Sorry, guys.”
>
> If you guys can whine this passionately about such a useless “feature,” then you can drop $150 to get in on it. Since I’m sure it’s that worth it to get the “experience.”

There’s a big difference between looking up info on Halopedian and “collecting” that info in-game. And there is no logical reason why that feature should be exlusive to Kinect except that MS/343i decided to make it exclusive in the hope that more people will shell out 150 bucks for a piece of hardware that doesn’t serve any real purpose but to use artificially walled-off gimmicks like the analyse function.

If games actually made good use of Kinect, maybe I would overcome my dislike of it. But as it is now, all it’s used for is for small things that aren’t really important but still piss you off because you get deliberately excluded from using them, and such entertaining and elaborate games where you jump and jerk around in your living room to make blue squares hit red triangles so the green circles dance happily.

43

Bungie wouldn’t do stuff like this

44

> Bungie wouldn’t do stuff like this

True. But Bungie wouldn’t benefit from it, unlike 343i/MS.

45

Like I said, they could have used Kinect as a tool to give gamers a new feature. But instead, they’ve used Kinect as a tool to take AWAY a feature from gamers.

46

it’s kinda BS but I don’t really care to be honest… I have a laptop for a reason

47

A lot of people seem to be assuming that were it not for Kinect this feature would have been included in the game and accessed through the pad.

This may not be the case.

Oftentimes in development you can increase your development budget by adding features that use certain things, so you’d get more for having an online game, or for making a game that supports the steering wheel. MS will have a structure in place where you get a bit extra in your dev budget if you make a feature that uses Kinect. So 343i designed this feature and MS will have agreed to give them extra money to develop it (it wouldn’t have been cheap, they’d need all the 3D assets, the GUI work, the sfx, all the written stuff (translated into every language), the rendering effect when you’re analysing, plus all the QA. You’re talking tens of thousands of dollars to add this feature.)

It’s wrong to assume that if Kinect didn’t exist you’d have still gotten this feature, it’s more likely that this feature was enabled (and budgeted for) by the fact that Kinect exists.

48

> Like I said, they could have used Kinect as a tool to give gamers a new feature. But instead, they’ve used Kinect as a tool to take AWAY a feature from gamers.

Take away a feature? So they’re deleting ALL Halo knowledge off the internet and burning all of the books? You can only get this stuff from The Library? Well, I’m glad I have a Kinect then…

49

@flawlesscowboy.

It’s amazing how uninformed you are about game development.

Also, for some reason, you don’t seem to understand that 343i ARE Microsoft. 343 is the name given to the group inside MS responsible for running Halo. They work out of the Microsoft campus, they are funded by MS and they are payrolled by MS.

Also, you think they built this feature from the ground up for Kinect? You think they said “hey guys, we have this amazing tech that can track skeletal movements, recognize emotions and see infa-red. Let’s utilize it in a way that doesn’t exploit more than a fraction of these features, let’s get it to do something that a button press could accomplish”.

Honestly, if you think they really built the library feature from the ground up for Kinect then you’re pretty naive.

50

> > Like I said, they could have used Kinect as a tool to give gamers a new feature. But instead, they’ve used Kinect as a tool to take AWAY a feature from gamers.
>
> Take away a feature? So they’re deleting ALL Halo knowledge off the internet and burning all of the books? You can only get this stuff from The Library? Well, I’m glad I have a Kinect then…

Yeah, of course, that’s exactly what I meant.

51

> @flawlesscowboy.
>
> It’s amazing how uninformed you are about game development.
>
> Also, for some reason, you don’t seem to understand that 343i ARE Microsoft. 343 is the name given to the group inside MS responsible for running Halo. They work out of the Microsoft campus, they are funded by MS and they are payrolled by MS.
>
> Also, you think they built this feature from the ground up for Kinect? You think they said “hey guys, we have this amazing tech that can track skeletal movements, recognize emotions and see infa-red. Let’s utilize it in a way that doesn’t exploit more than a fraction of these features, let’s get it to do something that a button press could accomplish”.
>
> Honestly, if you think they really built the library feature from the ground up for Kinect then you’re pretty naive.

LOL!

I actually work for a triple-A studio and have worked with Microsoft in the past. I’ve worked in the industry at the highest levels of development for 8 years.

I think it is you who is naive. You think they don’t have budgets and schedules to hit? They just have a limitless pot of gold to make as many cool features as they please without consideration as to how much money they’ll recoup from them?

You’re deluded.

52

You really are cute.

I honestly don’t believe you. Give us some proof. What studio are you employed by and what games have you been credited to? Also, give us some credentials so I can verify this.

And of course 343 doesn’t have a limitless pot of gold. Of course they have budgets and schedules. I don’t know why you assumed that my pointing out that 343 is an internal Microsoft studio on the payroll meant that I think they have some kind of limitless budget. I never once implied that. Just use your brain. MS owns Halo, MS owns Kinect. There is a joint opportunity for synergy. Is it inconceivable that some producer says “hey guys, we really want to push our Kinect, so we want you to have some Kinect exclusive functions. Take something not part of the original game, maybe that Library feature and restrict it to Kinect users only.”

If they were REALLY given the option to integrate Kinect you think the Library function is what they came up with? Like I said, that’s cute.

53

I love how people are hating on Microsoft for wanting to make money. They are a business! Of course they want to make money!

If they didn’t, they couldn’t pay their employees, they couldn’t research new technology for computers, they couldn’t invest in game developers, and they couldn’t dedicate an entire studio to developing the whole of the Halo franchise.

54

I’m not hating on them for trying to make money. Not at all. I’m quite happy spending thousands on MS products and helping them become more successful.

I’m unhappy that a unique and interesting feature has been restricted based on a peripheral that isn’t even needed for the feature.

There’s nothing wrong with them making money. There’s just good ways to do it and not so fair ways to do it.

Just imagine is there was a playlist in match making that was only available to people who owned a Windows phone and they cooked up a fairly weak reason as to why the phone was needed. How would you feel about it? Imagine if you raised your concern about this marketing technique. And how wold you feel if people responded by saying ‘don’t hate on Microsoft for trying to make more money, they’re a cooperation, that’s what they do’.

I’m sure you’d quickly tell them that they are missing the point, right?

55

> > Ahhh, ok, I get you. They take a standard feature out of the game that everyone could enjoy, just to make Kinect owners feel special? Awesome.
>
> Exactly. Expect this to happen a lot more as MS announced at E3 that they would be integrating Kinect into every Xbox game from now on.

I knew this was coming. I tried to warn the people but all I got was hate. :confused:

56

> You really are cute.
>
> I honestly don’t believe you. Give us some proof. What studio are you employed by and what games have you been credited to? Also, give us some credentials so I can verify this.

You seem to be such an expert on game development that I obviously don’t need to tell you that almost all game developer contracts have a section forbidding employees from revealing their identities and employment details on forums and message boards (for obvious reasons). Even without that clause in my contract I still wouldn’t feel the need to reveal all my personal details to random people on the Internet. I have worked for a first party Microsoft studio and have had games published on 360, I currently work at a first party Sony studio and have had games published on PS3 and PSP. If a mod wants to trace the IP of my posts earlier in this thread they’ll see they were posted from a Sony domain.

Just ask yourself: why would I lie about this?

> And of course 343 doesn’t have a limitless pot of gold. Of course they have budgets and schedules. I don’t know why you assumed that my pointing out that 343 is an internal Microsoft studio on the payroll meant that I think they have some kind of limitless budget. I never once implied that. Just use your brain. MS owns Halo, MS owns Kinect.

I know that, it was you who seemed to think my knowledge of the inner working of Microsoft was lacking. What was it I said that made you feel the need to explain 343 and Microsoft’s relationship?

> Is it inconceivable that some producer says “hey guys, we really want to push our Kinect, so we want you to have some Kinect exclusive functions. Take something not part of the original game, maybe that Library feature and restrict it to Kinect users only.”

It’s not inconceivable, I’m just suggesting an alternative (and more likely) scenario based on my own extensive experiences having worked as a first party developer. If you read my post you’ll notice I said “may not be the case” and “OftentiImes…”.

> If they were REALLY given the option to integrate Kinect you think the Library function is what they came up with? Like I said, that’s cute.

It looks like the library has gesture controls in the video, so it’s not a case of them just sticking the voice command in for analyze.

You are a very cynical person and I do feel sorry for you. I don’t understand why your default position would be that a feature has been taken away instead of added. I’ve never worked on a project where the scenario you’ve described has happened.

EDIT:

One more thing, I imagine you’re the kind of person who thinks pre-order incentives are content cut from the game too, aren’t you?

Let’s take a driving game as an example, if you pre-order you get a BMW that people who don’t pre-order won’t get. This is not content that has been cut from the game, this is content specifically developed as a pre-order incentive.

The marketing department comes to the developer and says they’d like to offer a pre-order incentive and asks the dev what they can do. The dev comes back and says they can do the BMW but it will cost £8k the vehicle modellers will have to do overtime in order to build it and the audio guys will need to get some extra foley done for it. The marketing department agree and £8k is added to the dev budget.

This is the case for all pre-order content I’ve ever been involved in, I’ve never seen content cut from the game to make a pre-order incentive.

57

> Like I said, they could have used Kinect as a tool to give gamers a new feature. But instead, they’ve used Kinect as a tool to take AWAY a feature from gamers.

true dat, i don’t care about throwing grenade with your voice because it’s not a replacement for the controller , just another option. but when they completely take away a new feature, that’s just wrong

58

> Complaining about a feature being Kinect exclusive is like complaining about being unable to play a game like Halo3 on the original Xbox.
>
> You’re going to have to upgrade eventually.

Define “upgrade.”

I guarantee you that the vast majority of Xbox users will never even experience a game using the Kinect, let alone buy a Kinect.

59

y does everyone care about this feature most halo fans already know everything that “the library” will tell them

60

> y does everyone care about this feature most halo fans already know everything that “the library” will tell them

People would prefer to see these things in-game than going on the internet to look. I know I would.