Right now, particularly Kinect, they’re in an ”experiment” phase of sorts to see ”where they should go” with this technology. Epic involved ”tangentially”.
”Wait until you see what people are going to do with these things,” Epic boss Mark Rein told GamesIndustry.biz in an interview. ”We’re involved tangentially in both technologies actually. The Kinect adventures game is Unreal Engine 3 and that sorcery game that Sony has, that’s also Unreal Engine 3.”
”So we have Sony and Microsoft, first-party, both doing cool things with our technology and I wouldn’t discount anything.” Rein speculates that Kinect is Microsoft’s first move into the motion control arena, and that it could pave the way for grander things.
”There’s no doubt in my mind that Kinect is very much an experiment to see where they should go with this stuff. I mean, this device has a camera,” he said, holding a prototype Android tablet. The Kinect tech could easily spread to other platforms.
”If you had the rest of the Kinect sensors on here, this’d be great. You could prop this down on a little stand, and play Dance Central right here. What would be wrong with propping this on the table and standing here in an environment with friends and doing a dance?”
”Who knows, maybe the future of Kinect is on your laptop? In fact I think that Microsoft already publicly said that they were going to do something with motion tech cameras on laptops. One of the things that they can do is recognise your face.”
”There are other portions of Move and Kinect that I think have been a little bit overlooked right now, that will eventually come into play.” There have been loud whispers about Kinect in shape or form heading to the PC, which is Microsoft’s main stomping ground.
”Don’t believe everybody’s nonsense about what one thing can do versus the other,” he said. ”You can have that with Kinect, you can have a gun. If you had a gun with a distinct look to it, even a shape, or a light on the end or something, Kinect would recognise that device just as well as Move can. Maybe even better.” Rein won’t pick favourites.
Are you excited about the future possibilities of Kinect and Move’s technology?
