Sony Computer Entertainment engineer Anton Mikhailov recently gave an interesting critique of Kinect for Xbox 360. Obviously he has a vested interest in PlayStation Move succeeding, but his critique was more interesting than the typical pissing contest between sales-and-marketing executives. He are some of the things he told Videogamer.com:
We feel like Move has more applicability across more genres so it fits better with what we try to do.
Also I think the tech is a bit, not so much immature, but not quite up to spec in what we think. Like the PlayStation Eye camera runs at 60 frames per second so it can track you very quickly whereas the Kinect and other depth camera are only 30 frames per second. So they are more suited for slower motions. Dancing is still kind of okay and then the yoga stuff that they were doing, it fits that very well, whereas if you want to do quick punches it’s harder to do that just because you can’t see the player as quickly.
The fact that it runs at 30 frames per second instead of 60, that’s a common problem with all those cameras. It’s actually hard to fix because you have a lot of data to transport. Sort of working with that image is expensive computationally-wise. I think they quoted something like 10-15 per cent of the Xbox resources, plus like 50 megs of memory or something like that. The Move takes less than 1%, and like 1 megabyte. So, you know, that’s just a bunch of numbers but to developers that means like Killzone 3 can just put in Move and not have to worry about it, whereas something like Kinect you have to make significant game changes to actually fit that into your game.
Whether you believe him or not, superior technology doesn’t necessarily win console wars. Look at the Nintendo Wii, for example. Furthermore, from what I’ve gathered, Microsoft’s marketing budget for Kinect makes Sony’s Move budget look like lunch money. People will buy into hype and purchase products that seem different.
What do you think of Mikhailov’s views on Kinect? Are they honest and legitimate? Or is he just touting his product’s technological superiority over one that’s outselling his?
