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[IbizaPocholo]

Bill Gates Reportedly Pressured Xbox Team to Respond to Wii Popularity

According to the recent Xbox documentary, Bill Gates presumably put pressure on the Xbox team to pursue motion based gaming in the mid-2000s.

gamerant.com

The seventh console generation was considered an interesting point in the history of the video game industry, since this was the period when publishers really started to experiment with motion controls. Following the success of the Nintendo Wii, both Sony and Microsoft released takes on motion control gaming, in the form of PlayStation Move and the Kinect respectively. Though, the latter's development was apparently brought about by none other than one of Microsoft's co-founders.

In Xbox's recently released documentary series Power On: The Story of Xbox, Phil Spencer commented that Bill Gates was disappointed that Xbox hadn't thought to pursue motion control gaming until after Nintendo had already released the Wii. In fact, Xbox's response to the Wii, in the form of the Kinect, would take another four years to release, while the Wii had already been out for a substantial amount of time.

Most members of the gaming community wouldn't normally think to consider Bill Gates' involvement in Xbox, considering how Gates' public attention was usually pointed towards other facets of the tech industry. Although, to think that Gates was apparently the one to put pressure on Xbox to pursue motion control gaming is rather fascinating, despite the fact that Microsoft's Kinect ultimately failed.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

Kinect didnt ultimately fail.

Literally dragged xbox 360 out of the grave. That shit was hotter than a tamale.

Just these gimmicks didnt do much to drag Wii U and Xbox One to success.

 

[ManaByte]

How many clickbait articles will Gamerant mine from Power On?

 

[Sosokrates]

The kinect was pretty good.
I think theres a place on modern consoles for motion controls.
The switch has shown both traditional controller based games and motion ones can work.

Its just that they forced people to buy the kinect.

It would of been interesting to see kinect games on Xbox series consoles. They could dedicate 3 zen2 cores just for the motion control, with the success of things like peleton it could work.
And now Microsoft has 25 studios it would not take away from hardcore games. Similarly to how sony juggles PSVR and traditional games (although this might change, because of there recent comments about traditional AAA games having PSVR2 funtional instead of tailor made VR games)

 

[leo-j]

Kinect didnt ultimately fail.

Literally dragged xbox 360 out of the grave. That shit was hotter than a tamale.

Just these gimmicks didnt do much to drag Wii U and Xbox One to success.

Kinect and move kind of helped to wind down the Wii’s complete control of that market. People suddenly had more options with ps move and Kinect. Also, Xbox 360 was doing well before Kinect, it’s just Wii was selling crazy numbers for a while. Tbh you would assume with the success swithc has been having that sony and Microsoft would consider handheld gaming again.

 

[yurinka]

The seventh console generation was considered an interesting point in the history of the video game industry, since this was the period when publishers really started to experiment with motion controls. Following the success of the Nintendo Wii, both Sony and Microsoft released takes on motion control gaming, in the form of PlayStation Move and the Kinect respectively. Though, the latter's development was apparently brought about by none other than one of Microsoft's co-founders.

No, Eyetoy was released for PS2 and a PS Move prototype for Eyetoy was publicly shown in 2000 and 2001.

 

[tusharngf]

Does bill play games? I guess not. STAY AWAY FROM CONSOLES DUDE.. this is not your windows and excel sheet lol. Let xbox team do their job !!

 

[ParaSeoul]

Kinect is a great piece of tech,it doesn't have a place in gaming imo.

 

[Bridges]

The kinect was pretty good.
I think theres a place on modern consoles for motion controls.
The switch has shown both traditional controller based games and motion ones can work.

Its just that they forced people to buy the kinect.

It would of been interesting to see kinect games on Xbox series consoles. They could dedicate 3 zen2 cores just for the motion control, with the success of things like peleton it could work.
And now Microsoft has 25 studios it would not take away from hardcore games. Similarly to how sony juggles PSVR and traditional games (although this might change, because of there recent comments about traditional AAA games having PSVR2 funtional instead of tailor made VR games)

I still stand by the belief that Kinect 2.0 was really awesome, way more functional than the original Kinect. But you're totally right, forcing it on everyone left a bad taste and it got associated with all the other pre-launch problems XB1 had, which is a damn shame. Fantasia: Music Evolved and D4 were both amazing games you couldn't play elsewhere (at the time) and made great use of motion controls.

 

[Sosokrates]

I still stand by the belief that Kinect 2.0 was really awesome, way more functional than the original Kinect. But you're totally right, forcing it on everyone left a bad taste and it got associated with all the other pre-launch problems XB1 had, which is a damn shame. Fantasia: Music Evolved and D4 were both amazing games you couldn't play elsewhere (at the time) and made great use of motion controls.

Indeed, motion controls can be good.
I like playing ARMs and skyward sword to have a break from sedentary gaming.

 

[ReBurn]

Does bill play games? I guess not. STAY AWAY FROM CONSOLES DUDE.. this is not your windows and excel sheet lol. Let xbox team do their job !!

You should watch the documentary

 

[Black_Stride]

Does bill play games? I guess not. STAY AWAY FROM CONSOLES DUDE.. this is not your windows and excel sheet lol. Let xbox team do their job !!

You should probably watch the documentary.

Kinect 1 was a huge huge huge success.

Forcing the Kinect 2 on everyone with the XB1 was one of the mistakes that happened with the XB1 launch.....that and always online no disk sharing.....the world just wasnt ready yet.....oh and lets not forget Television, TV...television.
If the Kinect 2 was an option im sure the XB1 launch would have been "abit" better.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Sony and MS wasted time and money on motion gaming fad. Just image how many traditional games they could had launched in those 3-4 years but they tagged on hard to motion gaming. By the time Move and Kinect were out, Wii was already at its peak and motion gaming would come tumbling down soon after.

As for Kinect success, I remember it selling a ton, but lets face it. The games were mostly crap. The biggest opportunity I saw in it wasnt even arm flapping. But the cam recording your face and animations and letting you import it into Player Creation mode for RPGs or sports or shooters. Yet only a few allowed that. So you got a camera all ready to go and it's used for infrared arm and leg moving. Got it.

 

[Kagey K]

Sony and MS wasted time and money on motion gaming fad. Just image how many traditional games they could had launched in those 3-4 years but they tagged on hard to motion gaming. By the time Move and Kinect were out, Wii was already at its peak and motion gaming would come tumbling down soon after.

As for Kinect success, I remember it selling a ton, but lets face it. The games were mostly crap. The biggest opportunity I saw in it wasnt even arm flapping. But the cam recording your face and animations and letting you import it into Player Creation mode for RPGs or sports or shooters. Yet only a few allowed that. So you got a camera all ready to go and it's used for infrared arm and leg moving. Got it.

The money and the secondary lift Xbox got from Kinect far outweighs yours or my opinion of it.

There are still many companies using the tech to this day, even if it didn't pan out for gaming the way they had hoped.

 

[SkylineRKR]

Kinect and Wii were fads. That was a forbidden word, but by 2011 both weren't much in demand anymore. The Wii U rode on the Wii name, yet completely tanked. So the Wii branding wasn't really powerful at least. Before that the Wii sales dwindled already. It ended up have a very small lead on the PS3 and 360 despite selling like cake for a few years straight.

Kinect was packed with the One just 3 years after its debut, and tanked to the point of MS removing it from the SKU to save the brand. No one wanted it anymore.

 

[Kagey K]

Kinect and Wii were fads. That was a forbidden word, but by 2011 both weren't much in demand anymore. The Wii U rode on the Wii name, yet completely tanked. So the Wii branding wasn't really powerful at least. Before that the Wii sales dwindled already. It ended up have a very small lead on the PS3 and 360 despite selling like cake for a few years straight.

Kinect was packed with the One just 3 years after its debut, and tanked to the point of MS removing it from the SKU to save the brand. No one wanted it anymore.

Let's be honest though, the best proof of the Wii was packed in with the system. It's no wonder they couldn't sell software beyond that.

Kinect was never fully realized, and didn't have that great game that really showed its worth.

 

[Werewolf Jones]

Was kind of irritating when they forced it onto games like ME3 at the time.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Kinect wasn't too bad actually. It was Microsoft focusing so heavily on it that was bad. I will never forget the cringe of those E3 conferences.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Every company was chasing it. The Wii was an insane success, so it wouldn’t have been wise to not explore it

sometimes it’s not really known what will be a fad and what won’t until hindsight. Or the opposite scenario like VR where it hasn’t hit mainstream yet but could be on the cusp of doing so. Just because VR hasn’t been an overnight success like Wii doesn’t mean it won’t be something like that or much bigger in the future

these sorts of investments are worth the gamble, you can’t be a technology and entertainment company and not dabble a bit in areas like these

in fact, many of these technologies used for VR were enabled by motion tech investments during the Wii era

 

[Kagey K]

Kinect wasn't too bad actually. It was Microsoft focusing so heavily on it that was bad. I will never forget the cringe of those E3 conferences.

When you are trying to grow market share and take risks, it's one of those things you have to do.

I remember Bill doing a demonstration in 2005 of what he wanted where you could find restaurants around you or landmarks, he had a giant camera with someone behind him processing it.

Now it's all apps, but at the time he was really thinking well ahead.

 

[SkylineRKR]

To me it were dark days. Sony and MS doubling down on motion controls. Sony kind of lucked out with the Move. They didn't fully support it and didn't forcefeed it. They were lambasted for being half assed, but the PS4 didn't suffer from its existence and the PS3 ended up having some very great twilight years with Move being pretty much on life support. Sony never stopped focusing on core games and it paid off. The PS4 was such a huge success not just because of the price but also because it succeeded a PS3 that just saw games like TLOU making waves. All core gamers flocked to Sony and I think they are more valuable for their staying power, attach rates and DLC purchases. All those Wii players, my sister in law being one, they never bought another console and never spent a dime on the marketplace.

Microsoft had abandoned core gaming nearly completely and the 360 had a bad 2012-13. The One launch is ofcourse a culmination of MS' 2010 strategy, which wasn't healthy for the long term.

 

[Kagey K]

To me it were dark days. Sony and MS doubling down on motion controls. Sony kind of lucked out with the Move. They didn't fully support it and didn't forcefeed it. They were lambasted for being half assed, but the PS4 didn't suffer from its existence and the PS3 ended up having some very great twilight years with Move being pretty much on life support. Sony never stopped focusing on core games and it paid off. The PS4 was such a huge success not just because of the price but also because it succeeded a PS3 that just saw games like TLOU making waves. All core gamers flocked to Sony and I think they are more valuable for their staying power, attach rates and DLC purchases. All those Wii players, my sister in law being one, they never bought another console and never spent a dime on the marketplace.

Microsoft had abandoned core gaming nearly completely and the 360 had a bad 2012-13. The One launch is ofcourse a culmination of MS' 2010 strategy, which wasn't healthy for the long term.

That's some rose tinted glasses.

Sony won because they had a better machine for a cheaper price and promised they were for the gamers.

The backlash they are receiving now from a subsection of the community is because they aren't following those beliefs anymore.

 

[Calverz]

“Kinect ultimately failed”

 

[The artful mincer]

Well sounds like a good short term success but ultimately a failure as it basically lost them the generation after.

Even now there just about starting to crawl back but even thats debatable

 

[M1chl]

Kinect is a great piece of tech,it doesn't have a place in gaming imo.

It was actually pretty big for garage gaming devs tho. Maybe still is for motion capture. However probably due to advancement of the ML, this thing is obsolete right now.

 

[NeoIkaruGAF]

Bill chasing the big money? Why, I’ll never.

I never tried Kinect, and it never struck me as being able to offer the same experience as Nintendo’s Wii games.
I still had more fun from some motion-controlled games than your average movie-wannabe blockbuster that some people are naive enough to call “revolutionary”. The truth is, the most vocal gamers are deeply averse to change and the gaming industry, on average, is as well. Motion controls were just a season in a 50yo market, yet some people are still talking about them like they changed gaming forever and the industry didn’t go back to same ol’ same ol’ after the Wii run its course.

 

[SEGA_2012]

Both Kinect and Bill are great.

 

[Bernkastel]

Kinect actually lived on outside of Xbox. It has its own market.

Azure Kinect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[stranno]

Kinect featured an amazing tech. Unfortunately it had a massive latency, so it wasn't suitable for pretty much any genre.

As always, Move didn't have anything to do with the Wiimote. The technology was already showcased by Sony years before the first news of the Revolution's motion controls. Of course the final design and the Navigator Controller were heavily influenced by the Wiimote, but the Move's big thing, the motion tracking, was already there.

 

[Fbh]

Kinect news always make me remember this young professor I had in college who was into gaming and was convinced Kinect would change gaming forever..... then a few years later he was like "Ok, I was wrong....but the Ouya though!!! now THIS will be big".

Anyway I think every executive with any relation to gaming at the time wanted a piece of that motion gaming Pie.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Was kind of irritating when they forced it onto games like ME3 at the time.

I played through ME3 on the 360 and never encountered a situation where I needed Kinect. What was forced?

 

[EverydayBeast]

You have to acknowledge Nintendo and their creativity with the Wii BUT if Microsoft doesn't pursue the Kinect they would be in the exact same spot as they are now, nobody was beating the Nintendo Wii that generation.

 

[Azelover]

They had to do it. The Wii was too popular.

i have only two problems with Kinect. One, it was expensive for an add on. And two, it fractured the market right in the middle.

Say what you will about the Wii and its remote controller, but there was the possibility of playing core games using it. We played Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Zelda. They all were normal games that used motion controls. Kinect wasn't built like that. Kinect games were Kinect games, Xbox games were Xbox. It was split down the middle.

 

[leo-j]

To me it were dark days. Sony and MS doubling down on motion controls. Sony kind of lucked out with the Move. They didn't fully support it and didn't forcefeed it. They were lambasted for being half assed, but the PS4 didn't suffer from its existence and the PS3 ended up having some very great twilight years with Move being pretty much on life support. Sony never stopped focusing on core games and it paid off. The PS4 was such a huge success not just because of the price but also because it succeeded a PS3 that just saw games like TLOU making waves. All core gamers flocked to Sony and I think they are more valuable for their staying power, attach rates and DLC purchases. All those Wii players, my sister in law being one, they never bought another console and never spent a dime on the marketplace.

Microsoft had abandoned core gaming nearly completely and the 360 had a bad 2012-13. The One launch is ofcourse a culmination of MS' 2010 strategy, which wasn't healthy for the long term.

Move became the main controller for PS VR tho. Move did not disappear it’s still selling (or it was before Sony halted producing PlayStation hardware outside of ps5). Move was actually very successful during the ps3 era, and was way more accurate than the Wii mote and Kinect.