MS dropped standalone Kinect processor because there was “no need for it”

“Forza is a graphical showpiece, and we had Forza with Kinect at E3… the graphic fidelity has actually improved in some areas from what they shipped with Forza 3. It’s still running at 60 FPS and it’s supporting Kinect, so there’s just no need to have that extra processor.”

Amazing. And yet a year ago (with processor) you’d be able to drive a car whilst sitting on your sofa. Now (sans processor) you can walk around a car.

But don’t worry fans. It’s still at 60fps.

There was a gameplay bit JP, and they’d beefed the graphics up quite a bit (higher polycount surroundings, much better shaders and lighting).

Then there’s this.

You know, this peripheral flop would be a highly entertaining sideshow if the cost of Live wasn’t going up $10 to offset the oil spill from the failboat.

@ Hitrun

According to the Video they are running right now on the 360 in the USA showing us how the optimize Kinect…there is no way it will work in my Game Room…My Chair is on a wall, so no 3 feet of arm clearance there, and standing up puts me 4 feet from my TV…so Unless I move my Man Cave into another room, Kinect will not work for me at all, Plus my Flat Screen is in an Entertainment Center, there was barely enough room to put the Wii Sensor Bar at the bottom of the TV and the Wii Microphone is on top of the TV, but enclosed in the Entertainment Center, so No Chance of the Kinect fitting that configuration anytime soon, and I am not about to spend 2 full days emptying one room and moving my Man Cave into that room just for a Stupid Kinect…

Oh and they want the room to be Light not Dark, and Be Free of Clutter…They obviously do not understand the concept of a gaming room or man cave!!

Not only they drop a procesor, they still charge idiots who buy it at 150 bucks.. well done microsoft, dumbing down the fucking gaming industry.. fucking casual players will be on xbox.. ugh. more casual games for everyone…

No standalone processor= FAIL. Not a fan of MS but, WTF!

processor, no processor doesn’t make a difference. I’m not buying it. I hope microsoft falls on there face. At this point if they don’t invent some new ip no number of expensive add ons gonna save them. mario zelda, halo fable, microsoft is the new two trick pony on the block. What the hell ever happened to rare? what a bunch of losers to go from conker and perfect dark to kinect adventures, thats just ridiculous. Make a fucking game microsoft.

Well done Psychotext for being the only poster so far that isnt a braindead troll.

The VG247 community has really gone down the shitter recently.

^ …Says a braindead troll.

Some may argue, yes the processor does take a hit and therefore graphical fidelity can diminish, but the casual gamers who’ll lap up Kinect won’t be looking for high end graphics in their casual-centric games. I mean how many polygons does it take to render a goose playing basket ball with a kitten on a fantasy island covered in sweets and flowers?

lies lies lies lies

I love how people still get worked up about this!

“God damn, they removed a chip! A chip! From a thing I don’t own! I don’t even know what the chip did, but how DARE they take it away for no good reason! I demand they put two chips back in! Or send me my chip in the post! Not that I’m buying Kinect, but GOD DAMN I’d have been more likely to have bought it if IT HAD HAD A CHIP!”

@12

Very true… however, I do think the price is still based on what Kinect could have been with onboard image processing and the original higher resolution IR depth map camera.

@10 and 12 made me laugh.

@2
Yep … http://www.vg247.com/2010/06/14/forza-kinect-in-development/ … though the actual gameplay seemed to be limited to an overtake the cars mini-game with control of just the steering in the demo.

I’d like to see a lot more standard games saying they will be supporting controller + kinect for things like head tracking before I’m happy that the processor removal hasn’t had an impact in that area.

@10 & @12
The processor removal complaints were more related to the impact that will have on standard games implementing supplementary Kinect functionality into a game. For example will a dev put head tracking into their new FPS or racer if it causes a significant processor hit? It’s nothing to do with the casual or Kinect only games.

why would you want to track your head? if you turned your head you wouldn’t be able to see the screen.

It gets interpreted by the game, small movement of your head == bigger movement in game. So you stay looking at the screen. Forgotten the term for it. It’s been fairly widely developed on the PC and shown in use in a variety of games.

it can’t be very precise can it? is that supposed to replace the right joystick/controller or compliment it?

@19
You’d be surprised how much they can pull out of even a fairly poor video feed. You’ve got some key features like eyes they can pick out and then base movement on that.

It would complement the RS for me. I would use head movements would be for more subtle movement like actually looking into corners are you go round them rather than full on reverse view or looking left and right fully. Though those could be implemented too.