Microsoft: Kinect Deliberately Open

[News Portal]

Much schadenfreude has been enjoyed at Microsoft's expense as a gaping security hole in [app=7172]Kinect[/app] has allowed the geek community to unlock the camera's incredible potential. But now the giants of the closed-source world have retrospectively announced the controller's open USB connection was a design choice, and that third party coders should go for their lives.

In other news, Satan goes ice skating in his backyard.

Read full article by Brenna Hillier

[seditious]

Of course Microsoft want the net community to play around with the Kinect hardware and come up with all kinds of crazy ****. MS want this because not even they know what the heck to do with the Kinect. Everyone's experimenting and trying to invent new ways of having fun with the device. It'll be a survival of the fittest environment for a while with the best ideas floating to the top.

On the next generation of Kinect, after MS have tapped the collective minds of the net community, then we'll likely see it locked down. Certainly by the time of the next console release.

This isn't good will on the part of Microsoft, this is just them admitting to themselves that they don't have a monopoly on innovation and they don't know where gameplay on the Kinect is headed.

[nider]

Of course Microsoft want the net community to play around with the Kinect hardware and come up with all kinds of crazy poop. MS want this because not even they know what the heck to do with the Kinect. Everyone's experimenting and trying to invent new ways of having fun with the device. It'll be a survival of the fittest environment for a while with the best ideas floating to the top.

On the next generation of Kinect, after MS have tapped the collective minds of the net community, then we'll likely see it locked down. Certainly by the time of the next console release.

This isn't good will on the part of Microsoft, this is just them admitting to themselves that they don't have a monopoly on innovation and they don't know where gameplay on the Kinect is headed.

This and also they figure it's the best way of trying to get this device to take off; they're scared that it won't be as successful as the Wii.

[Mekon]

So... backflip?

Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products. With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant.

http://games.on.net/article/10715/Kinec ... _Surprised

Or they realised they had no legal basis to challenge people on, so claimed it was by design all along?

[Lance P King]

Or they realised they had no legal basis to challenge people on, so claimed it was by design all along?

Just know that whatever happens next, has been planned by people a lot smarter than you, ten stories underground utilizing elements of crashed spacecraft.

[jambo]

Calm down Lance, this is only vidya games.

Smart move by MS, even if it is a backflip. There's nothing better than supporting the open source community these days.

[Bronze_D]

not like they have much of a choice,

anything that can boost the adoption rate at the early stages is going to be a godsend given that kinect practically lives or dies by the virtue of how many decides to try it at this stage, if they spiral down to the ground now then it's basically death sentence to kinect.

so if the third party can give influx of new ideas and attention for free then they indeed should support it since they need every help they can get at this critical phase of the new product.

if kinect was instead some sort of phenomenal success that made them swim in cash right now then MS would have a whole different reason to look at third party dev and it's probably not going to be anywhere as warm as this one.

[dodgyramjet]

When it comes to gaming this is actually pretty typical Microsoft. They actually seem somewhat fond of indie games developers. It's a shame that our classification system makes it impractical for the indie games channel to be make available for Australian Xbox Live.

I've been playing with their XNA Games Studio framework (free) and Visual C# Express (also free) for a while, these tools make it possible for an indie to cross platform develop for Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone 7.
And Microsoft seem genuinely excited about getting indies on board with kinect which means making it open to working on a PC for games development as they do with the Xbox gamepad. This interview with Phil Spencer seems to indicate we will see tools in the not too distant future.
http://au.xboxlive.ign.com/articles/112/1122614p1.html

[TRB]

Its probably more a case of they couldn't see a way to remedy this situation in the hardware without a major redesign and after a bit of a brainstorm have decided to go with "its a feature not a flaw".

[exe3]

pretty cool what these people have been making so far, but can they fix the delay? >_>

[TheScientist]

seems sensible for microsoft:

1. more kinects will sell just through the market of people that like to tinker.
2. might see some interesting new applications
3. find the brightest stars and employ them. Google do it and look how successful they've become

[dodgyramjet]

exe3 is your kinect suffering a delay? Mine works flawlessly, except in direct sunlight, that kills response totally.

[ShaolinSalesman]

Mine works flawlessly, except in direct sunlight, that kills response totally.

Contradiction ftw!

[dodgyramjet]

Nice work ShaolinSalesman, pulling out just a section of a post rather that quoting in it's entirety and therfore taking it out of context.

I was just interested exe3's mention of a delay, I know it was commented on as an issue with kinect pre-launch but I can't say I noticed the problem in the games I have played so far.

[TheScientist]

shaolin was not incorrect nor did he pull that out of context.

saying something works flawlessly, then immediately saying that it doesn't, is indeed a contradiction, or a paradox if you prefer. your indignancy is misplaced.

it is a good thing to know however that sunlight can be bad for it. is it just direct sunlight onto the cameras? or also if the cameras are shaded and the subjects are under direct sunlight?