Is Microsoft's Kinect a Gaming Failure? 130
MojoKid writes "E3 is well underway in Los Angeles, and Microsoft has already made a major splash with its 'SmartGlass' technology, game demos, and its announcement that a Kinect-powered version of Internet Explorer will debut on the Xbox 360. This is a marked change from last year, when Kinect was the unquestioned centerpiece of Microsoft's display and the company's demos focused on how Kinect-powered games used your full body as a controller. Kinect is in the interesting position of having sold extremely well while failing to move the bar forward in any of the ways Microsoft projected in the run up to its launch. Scroll through the ratings on Kinect-required titles, and the percentages are abysmal. Kinect's biggest problem is rooted in ergonomics. Gamepads with buttons may be crude approximations of real life, but they're simple and intuitive. They're also flexible — a great many games have conditional scenarios that allow the same button to perform different functions depending on what's going on within the game. Pure Kinect games don't have a simple mechanism to incorporate these features, and there's no easy way around them. The motion-controller's most enduring features may ultimately be its capabilities outside the gaming sphere."
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I love Valve, but just because the biggest publishers don't make games you want doesn't mean they don't make games that most people want. Here's the list of the 10 best selling games in the US for 2011:
1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC) - Activision
2. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3) - Ubisoft
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC) - Bethesda
4. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC) - EA
5. Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2) - EA
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC) - Activision
7. Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC) - Warner Brothers
8. Gears of War 3 (360) - Microsoft
9. Just Dance 2 (Wii) - Ubisoft
10. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC) - Ubisoft
Basically, all the publishers everyone hates and swears they'll never buy from again dominate the list. I hate a lot of them too (although the only one I won't buy from anymore is Ubisoft), but I don't pretend that my views are the norm. The fact is EA, Activision and Ubisoft basically print money, whether I like their games or not I have to admit they're doing something right.
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Valve never publishes sales numbers, and as it's not a publicly traded company, it doesn't have to.
I have no idea whether Portal 2 should or shouldn't be in that list, but the lack of information about a major publisher like Valve automatically makes any statistic bogus.
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they don't publish sales numbers but Gabe Newell came out and said"Newell stated that Portal 2 had shipped more than 4 million units, with the personal computer versions outselling the console versions; overall, both Portal and Portal 2 had shipped more than 8 million units. " so that info is avalible.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you notice that every single title in that list is a sequel? And none of them are even based on a game that wasn't half assed copy of something some smaller studio designed first. The difference is marketing dollars.
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Missing the point here. I'm speaking of the growing disillusion between large dev houses and the gaming public. Most of E3 was about shit that has almost nothing in common with the games on that list. It's not about whats happening now, or in the past. It's what's happening in the future.
Look at Japan to see the future. What's coming out of Japan? Nothing. Nothing at all. Once the undisputed game dev empire and they are nowhere on your list. What's happening at EA now is what alredy happened at Capcom. Big
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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kickstarter has been getting my funds lately, but only for DRM free games.
I guess that makes me a pirate... that gives money away?
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You mean kinda like what LEAP [leapmotion.com] is showing off?
Leap is only for your hands, and only covers 8 cubic feet. Not nearly the same thing as kinect, so referring to it as a more polished version of kinect seems a bit silly to me.
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Yep. Everybody I know who owns a Kinect is using it as a 3D scanner (or something similar).
Nobody plays games with them.
Microsoft should have listened to me (Score:1)
The future is but one word: dildonics. Get in on the ground floor this time, MS!
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Dildonics is so last century! Teledildonics, now that is where it's at!
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Dildonics is so last century! Teledildonics, now that is where it's at!
Its actually the truth. The PS2 had a Trance Vibrator released for REZ.
My Wii has the same problem (Score:2, Interesting)
QUOTE: " Kinect's biggest problem is rooted in ergonomics. Gamepads with buttons may be crude approximations of real life, but they're simple and intuitive."
I wish Nintendo would let players *choose* if they want to use the motion sensor, or a controller. I wasted 3 hours trying to beat the *first* boss in Metroid Prime 3. If I had been able to use the standard Gamecube controller as the previous games, it would have been dead in mere minutes.
Pikmin and Zelda: TZ and Sonic Adventure 5(?) were also a pain
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Forcing developers, to force users to navigate UI with Kinect is the primary issue for me.
As a developers on one of the initial Kinect titles, and as a consumer playing other games... this was and is one of the biggest barriers to entry to Kinect's success.
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Indeed, I remember playing SSBB with a friend when it first came out and we would round robin using the Gamecube controller we had on hand. Whoever was using the Gamecube controller would win and whoever was using the Wiimote lost. SSBB doesn't use the motion controls but even just using the Wiimote as a regular controller was wonky at best. The sideways NES style just didn't work as well.
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>I wish Nintendo would let players *choose* if they want to use the motion sensor, or a controller. I wasted 3 hours trying to beat the *first* boss in Metroid Prime 3. If I had been able to use the standard Gamecube controller as the previous games, it would have been dead in mere minutes.
The problem with Metroid Wii is not the controller. The problem is your failure to locate the One Fucking Pixel that achieves victory or even allows movement in some cases.
Re:My Wii has the same problem (Score:5, Informative)
You're thinking of Other M, Not Metroid Prime 3.
--Jeremy
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I wasted 3 hours trying to beat the *first* boss in Metroid Prime 3.
What, the encounter falling down the shaft with Ridley? That first fight with one of the other mercs? Or the first boss in one of the seeds?
In any case, 3 hours? Seriously? The *only* difference between the MP1/2 and MP3 controls (that you would have access to at that point in the game) was that you have direct control over the targeting reticle.
--Jeremy
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The boss you encounter when you are trying to escape the dying station. Right before a savepoint I was trying to reach. (The savepoint really should be before the boss, not after.)
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When I played Zelda: Skyward Sword I was amazed how well the motion control worked, and I wouldn't exactly call a Zelda game "simple".
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As a matter of fact, I really enjoyed how controllers were used in Mario Galaxy - it used the nunchuk+wiimote setup, and feels like a regular controller, except that you sometimes point at the screen or shake the wiimote.
My point is, Mario Galaxy didn't overused the wii controllers - instead, it used a traditional setup with some of the new features. And it was a good choice, in my opinion. By the way, holding the nunchuk and the wiimote feels much more confortable than a sixaxis - of course, you don't ha
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I had two problems with the Mario Galaxy controls.
First, the analogue stick on the Nunchuck is not good - its range of motion is just plain unnatural. Why can't it be in a circular groove like the analogue sticks on proper controllers?
Second, the use of "waggle" as a button to activate spin-jump. Too messy and imprecise for a core control in a precision platformer. Every time I die on a jump because "waggle" fails to register, I curse the controllers.
The Mario Galaxy games had some great level design, but f
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I don't remember the actual name of the game. And I didn't have any problem beating Metroid Prime 1 and 2. The Wiimote has a problem of non-responsiveness where the player's inputs don't register.
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You don't "point" in the GC version. You press the "target lock" button and it automatically jumps to the spot you're supposed to shoot at. Also Metroid Prime isn't meant to be a shooter..... like the original game it's meant to be a hide-and-seek game (trying to find the parts the programmer hid). In fact all of the game can be played without shooting anything, except the end-of-level bosses.
>>>Not sure if you were using the standard configuration that makes it a PITA to look around
Always.
I do
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Doesn't really matter if it's primary a shooter or not, there is an FPS element (however small or big) and it was immensely improved (for me at least) with the addition of a straightforward pointing/looking scheme. I'm sure that the GC plays fine once you get used to the controls, but I wasn't in a country with Nintendo presence in the GameCube era. I picked it up used but hadn't played much when I rented MP3 and was blown away by how much more enjoyable it was just due to the controls. Promptly picked up o
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The control SEEMS logical, but the damn wand doesn't register most of my inputs. Not just with MP3 but most of the games. It is not as precise/responsive as pressing a button on a controller.
>>>Doesn't really matter if MP3 is primary a shooter or not, there is an FPS element (however small or big)
On my old Atari there's a game called "Maze Runner" which has an FPS element (first-person view) but would not be properly termed an FPS. And then there's the numerous racing games which also feature an
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You move in a grid-less full 3D environment, looking at it from first person perspective. One of your hands is a gun and you are encouraged (even if you don't have to) to use it frequently. I think that is enough to qualify as "with first person shooter elements", much like the original games had a platforming element to them. That said everything that (for me) makes the new interface better for shooting things also makes it easier to look around to see what I need to avoid and find things.
The inputs very m
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But there's also a free-form pointing mode that you enter by holding the R trigger, which you need to look around better and sometimes to even see a lock-on spot in the air or on a large target.
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I have never encountered this problem. Make sure the sensor bar is placed well such that the top of the Wiimote can easily see it.
Audio Controls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Audio Controls (Score:5, Insightful)
But that has nothing to do with Kinect! (Score:3)
The stupid thing though is that Kinect voice controls have NOTHING AT ALL to do with the Kinect hardware. All that analysis is done on the Xbox itself. Sure it is using Kinect code, but the code runs on the CONSOLE, it is not run on the Kinect hardware like the 3D processing.
Which means that all of these games that have voice control could EASILY have had this enabled using the headset, if Microsoft wanted to allow that. But they'd much rather push more stupid Kinect sales.
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Although the sensor unit was originally planned to contain a microprocessor that would perform operations such as the system's skeletal mapping, it was revealed in January 2010 that the sensor would no longer feature a dedicated processor. Instead, processing would be handled by one of the processor cores of the Xbox 360's Xenon CPU.[63] According to Alex Kipman, the Kinect system consumes about 10-15% of the Xbox 360's computing resources.[64]
Also the kinect has an array of microphones, not just one. Sure you could make a headset to do this but you couldn't use any old headset.
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My understanding is that just like the voice processing is done on the xbox, the 3d processing is as well
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its voice control capabilities are its most enduring feature to me. Being able to control the various video streaming services by talking to the TV still feels like we are living in the future.
Considering "Hey You Pikachu", though flawed was an N64 game and there were PS2 games with voice recognition I'm surprised Nintendo and Sony haven't done more with voice control./recognition. Never had a Dreamcast but there was Seaman on that.
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I guess, they have discovered that it's a bad idea and abandoned it.
Voice commands SUCK ASS as an input for a game.
Re:Audio Controls (Score:4, Funny)
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No, but it listens very attentively. I believe that's where the therapeutic effect lies.
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Sometimes i swear at it.
Ratings (Score:5, Insightful)
Scroll through the ratings on Kinect-required titles, and the percentages are abysmal.
Scroll through? Scroll where? Let's head over to amazon then and see how they're doing:
Do I need to keep scrolling? I don't see many games with reviews under 3 stars. Where are these supposed abysmal ratings?
Re:Ratings (Score:5, Interesting)
He means by professional reviewers, which just don't like these kinds of games.
I bought Fight for the PS3 move and it is a great game that got terrible professional reviews. I am convinced this is because Fight is actual exercise.
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I've given up on "professional" reviews. There always seems to be a bias, an agenda, or just paying back their advertisers. I follow a few people on YouTube who have done reviews that have mostly lined up with my views of games. And this extends beyond just the motion games.
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That's pretty bad for amazon reviews (which tend to be inflated). Usually anything below 4.5 isn't worth buying.
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Amazon supress sometimes negative review (Score:2)
Kinect Sports 75% metacritic (90% amazon)
Kinect sport 2 65% (amazon 80%) Kinect star wars 35% user score (55% professional) amazon 70%.
Kinect disneyland 75% (amazon 70%).
I did not bother looking up the rest, but from the user score in my experience is that those are average or good game, but not *special* or incredible. I think the GP exagerated with his abysmal precentage, but they cetrainly are not excellent percentage.
Cloud compatible? (Score:2)
Can I use Metro in the Cloud with SmartGlass, or will I need a wizard to help me?
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no, you just need clippy
If I use a wizard to find Clippy, will Bob take me to the SmartGlass Metro Cloud?
Or is that only if I'm using Windows Millenium?
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You can do anything in the cloud. Anything at all!
Welcome to the cloud.
It's very good when it augments controllers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I dont like the idea of head tracking - the head and the screen are sort of a fixed construct. Using headtracking would just make you roll your eyes ALOT.
Re:It's very good when it augments controllers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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You love the fact you spend $200 for Xbox MICROPHONE? thats great man.
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Nice fit for casual games. (Score:3)
I picked up a 360 with Kinect for my parents a couple of weeks ago. Controllers are becoming more difficult for them to use; and I figured controlling a game with whole body movements would work better for them.
So far they've really enjoyed it; it seems to be a good fit for the same casual gamers who have been using a Wii, but want games that are a bit more complex.
Motion must be fun (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not the Knnect sensor..... (Score:1)
The Knnect sensor is quite a nice feature if you ask me but the *real* problem is with the whole game console industry and not with the various user interfaces. The game console industry is being squeezed out of the market by smartphones and tablets with touch screens. Yea, the user interface on these devices really sucks for classic game design, but they are extremely portable, have a very active application development communities and hundreds of cheap applications already available.
I expect the game
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I have zero desire to play on a tiny screen. If I did I would have bought a Gameboy a decade ago, but instead I prefer the full-sized games on TV just as I prefer full-sized movies on TV, not something on my little phone.
It was obviously doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
The average kinect game involves making some exaggerated flailing motions that map onto some canned animations. Even then it often screws up or gets confused. There's only so far you can go with that system. Sports / fitness / dance games are the main focus but there isn't much beyond that. There have been a few genuinely innovative attempts to use kinect in a novel way that have almost succeeded such as Once Upon a Monster but most games have been dire and people have gotten bored of it.
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The other issue is consistency, sometimes you can use voice in the menus, sometimes you can't, and it seems unable to understand my kids at all, which is very frustrating for them.
And one in the games there are different ways to select menu items etc. if there was a standard API of gursturs that woul make more sense. The kinnect gets much less use than I expected by the kids.
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and it seems unable to understand my kids at all, which is very frustrating for them.
Voice recognition seems to have issues with people with high and/or squeaky voices. My late mother, who had Rheumatoid Arthritis was simply unable to use Dragon Naturally speaking because it simply wouldn't recognize her high pitched squeaky voice, not even for the first "welcome to dragon naturally speaking...." training. It worked for me out of the box, though.
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The irony of course is that despite all the hating, the quite humourous Playstation ads were right; buttons help a lot, and a trackable controller has better position and direction sensing than your flailing arms.
Its much easier to show a game where to aim a bow and arrow or a sword or shield with a small controller in your hand to simulate them ...
That all aside, all this emphasis on motion gaming misses a lot of the point; we want to do things in video games that we can't do for real. I don't know how to
Yep (Score:1)
Chuck it in the failure pile with the Jaguar, 32X, and the Wii.
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Chuck it in the failure pile with the Jaguar, 32X, and the Wii.
Dude, did you seriously just lump the Wii in with Jaguar and 32X? You might want to go take a quick peek at some sales numbers for the Wii before calling it a 'failure'. If the 360 has surpassed the Wii in sales, it's because they break and people replace them. It's not at all uncommon to hear a gamer say "I'm on my third 360." Kid at Target even said he was on his fourth as he was ringing mine up (I finally gave in and got one for the kids). Don't get me wrong, I think the 360 is a great system, I lik
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but to call the Wii a failure is just dishonest.
It's a short-term success, but in the long-term it's going to cost Nintendo. The Wiimote is the only widely-supported control system on the platform, and for many games it's too limiting.
For games that require fast action, most players I've met get frustrated quickly. Motion control waggles are always a balance between dead-zone and live-zone, and since too much dead-zone frustrates players, they push the live-zone to the bleeding edge. This means as player
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Depends on the goal (Score:3, Insightful)
Whether Kinect is a failure depends on exactly how you define success.
-- Controlling the games we're used to playing on the xbox? FAIL.
-- Getting good reviews from people who review games on our favorite gaming websites? FAIL.
-- Selling a lot of units? WIN.
-- Has some games that some consumers really like? WIN.
-- Good as an input mechanism for some interesting non-traditional uses? WIN.
-- The future of gaming? FAIL.
-- The future of computer-human interaction? PROBABLY.
As an additional note, the first version isn't terribly awesome, but inevitably it'll get better in the future.
It's a couch potato failure (Score:4, Interesting)
I play video games specifically because I *want* to sit on my lard arse while blowing up aliens, flinging birds or jumping on turtles. Back in my day, you only got up in front of the TV and flailed around madly if you were a sore losing spazz. Yes, I just played the grumpy old gamer card.
Rot in hell Kinect, Dance Dance Revolution, Wii Sports and any other video game concept that dares pollute my holy pastime with elements of "gym class"!
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You can easily "game" a Wii controller so that you can use it while sitting on your ass. Very little actual motion is required for most activities.
Plus there are buttons.
See adult try to pretend he's bowling. See kid move the wiimote in the least natural but most effective path possible.
The problem with Kinect may be that it's not simple enough and you can't be lazy with it.
Motion Gaming a fad, more at 10 (Score:2)
Video capture systems to interact with computers have been around since the Amiga, and they are great for some games in some situations, but on the other hand you dont want to move your furniture to jump around like a dolt for every single game, it gets tiresome, tedious, and frustrating. Yea great you have had fun with them for a little while, but where does it end up? Right next to your WII, move, eye-toy, light guns, activator and rock-n-roller. Whats your next console going to have in the box? A gamepad
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Ergonomics? Yup (Score:2)
But face it, if people wanted to play sports, they'd go outside and play sports. I play video games because I am not fast enough, dexterous enough, or in shape enough to stand there and participate in the game. I want to sit on the couch and play.
But its more than that. How long do you want to stand there with your arm held out doing something. Everyone talks
biggest problem.. (Score:1)
A bit of (relevant) history (Score:2)
Maturity and Context (Score:2)
By Maturity, I mean of the tech. Kinect is cool, no doubt, but it's still rather mediocre at tracking subtle movements. This means it works for games that feature gross physical gestures, but still it's nothing like as high a level as resolution as the cheapest controllers.
By Context I mean of the game. If I'm playing a boxing game on my couch, I might want to just play the game, and not actually BOX. If I want to go play golf, I'll go play golf (ie outdoors). If I'm playing Skyrim at midnight, I might
Standardized control conventions is what's lacking (Score:2)
On gamepads, navigating menus by moving the thumbstick in the direction of the item you want to select is intuitive and a standard way of how basically all games (I should say UI's) work. It's also a standard convention to have the A button select or accept things and have the B button go back to the previous screen or cancel actions. Does Kinect have such standardized control mechanisms?
Room size matters (Score:2)
I got to try the Kinect recently as part of a "workout" game review. While I liked the game itself, the Kinect had serious drawbacks. Mostly, I found that my living room was too small for it. It wouldn't be able to see me (no matter how I situated the Kinect) until my heels were pushing against my couch. Try doing a workout while your feet bump against your couch repeatedly. It's possible, but much harder than if the Kinect let me take a step or two forward. Then, if I was doing any kind of movement t
It's for casual gamers, duh (Score:2)
Just like the PS2 Move and the Wii, the Kinect is for casual gaming. If you don't like dancing, or petting furry animals, then it isn't for you. It isn't fast enough or accurate enough for fast hardcore gaming. Hardcore gamers don't want to spend 14 hours straight doing excercise: they want to zone out into the virtual world by pushing buttons. If you want to capture the Call of Duty market, do the opposite of the Kinect: make a direct brain interface.
The Kinect is a casual gaming success. It allowed M
how should i say this in the most diplomatic way? (Score:1)
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How many of those 1 million units were used to actually play games though? Of all the people I know with a kinect (several), none of them even own xboxes. They use it with their PC to make motion controlled apps (which also fail, as it requires a kinect and not enough people have a kinect).
Re:Kinect is a piece of shit... (Score:5, Funny)
Foul-mouthed, unpleasant, a blowhard, and lacking even the most basic command of the English language.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we have a gamer.
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Yes, we have a typical Slashdot AC poster...
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