Microsoft confident it can overcome Kinect’s "perception problem"

Kinect being at the heart of Xbox One will lead to its eventual acceptance among even its most ardent critics, Microsoft believes.

That Kinect was an optional extra with Xbox 360 meant that its implementation was sporadic and unreliable. The fact that Kinect 2.0 shipping with every Xbox One eradicates that issue, Xbox One planning and marketing director Albert Penello told OXM.

"One of the biggest challenges with Kinect is that the people who are the most vocal against it, often haven’t used it," he said. It is the constant struggle of being the people who conceptualise these things. And it’s hard to break past that.

"We’re aware with Kinect – everything [critics have] said, particularly outside of the US, with smaller homes and things like that, where people have to move furniture and so on. But with the new Kinect, I don’t believe [those things] are going to be an issue.

"I firmly believe that the experiences will sell. If it’s there, now that everybody can rely on it, now that we’re not burdening developers [with the task of making] trade-offs with games that use it, that means more people are going to experience it.

"I think they’re going to discover the same thing that everyone else discovers, which is, you’re going to use it. I mean, people just went straight to some flailing-arm Halo idea, which is never going to happen, but now that, you know, it’s always there, I think there are some really cool ways it can be used."