Rare wanted Kinect controller

Kinect may be the pioneer of entirely controller-free games control, but there was a time in its development when both British developer Rare and Microsoft Game Studios boss Peter Molyneux were adamant” that some sort of physical controller was vital to its success.

We went over to see Kinect – really early hardware, held together with sticky tape,” Rare’s creative director George Andreas told Edge, as reported by CVG.

We were amazed by the potential, but what we had seen didn’t realise that potential, and it wasn’t until the flight home when were chatting that it sank in.

We were absolutely adamant that we needed a button, something with haptic feedback, that would initiate an action. We were very vocal to Kudo [Tsunoda, Kinect lead] at the time, and Peter Molyneux was as well, that you needed something in your hand.

It took a long time. We threw some prototypes together and then we saw you didn’t need one.”