Project Natal

Kinect is a line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flight calculations, which can in turn be used to perform real-time gesture recognition and body skeletal detection, among other capabilities. They also contain microphones that can be used for speech recognition and voice control.

Kinect was originally developed as a motion controller peripheral for Xbox video game consoles, distinguished from competitors (such as Nintendo's Wii Remote and Sony's PlayStation Move) by not requiring physical controllers. The first-generation Kinect was based on technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, and unveiled at E3 2009 as a peripheral for Xbox 360 codenamed "Project Natal". It was first released on November 4, 2010, and would go on to sell eight million units in its first 60 days of availability. The majority of the games developed for Kinect were casual, family-oriented titles, which helped to attract new audiences to Xbox 360, but did not result in wide adoption by the console's existing, overall userbase.

As part of the 2013 unveiling of Xbox 360's successor, Xbox One, Microsoft unveiled a second-generation version of Kinect with improved tracking capabilities. Microsoft also announced that Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision. However, Microsoft would still bundle the new Kinect with Xbox One consoles upon their launch in November 2013. A market for Kinect-based games still did not emerge after the Xbox One's launch; Microsoft would later offer Xbox One hardware bundles without Kinect included, and later revisions of the console removed the dedicated ports used to connect it (requiring a powered USB adapter instead). Microsoft ended production of Kinect for Xbox One in October 2017.

Kinect has also been used as part of non-gaming applications in academic and commercial environments, as it was cheaper and more robust compared to other depth-sensing technologies at the time. While Microsoft initially objected to such applications, it later released software development kits (SDKs) for the development of Microsoft Windows applications that use Kinect. In 2020, Microsoft released Azure Kinect as a continuation of the technology integrated with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Part of the Kinect technology was also used within Microsoft's Hololens project.

History

Development

The origins of the Kinect started around 2005, at a point where technology vendors were starting to develop depth-sensing cameras. Microsoft had been interested in a 3D camera for the Xbox line earlier but because the technology had not been refined, had placed it in the "Boneyard", a collection of possible technology they could not immediately work on.

In 2005, PrimeSense was founded by tech-savvy mathematicians and engineers from Israel to develop the "next big thing" for video games, incorporating cameras that were capable of mapping a human body in front of them and sensing hand motions. They showed off their system at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft's Alex Kipman, the general manager of hardware incubation, saw the potential in PrimeSense's technology for the Xbox system. Microsoft began discussions with PrimeSense about what would need to be done to make their product more consumer-friendly: not only improvements in the capabilities of depth-sensing cameras, but a reduction in size and cost, and a means to manufacturer the units at scale was required. PrimeSense spent the next few years working at these improvements.

Nintendo released the Wii in November 2006. The Wii's central feature was the Wii Remote, a handheld device that was detected by the Wii through a motion sensor bar mounted onto a television screen to enable motion controlled games. Microsoft felt pressure from the Wii, and began looking into depth-sensing in more detail with PrimeSense's hardware, but could not get to the level of motion tracking they desired. While they could determine hand gestures, and sense the general shape of a body, they could not do skeletal tracking. A separate path within Microsoft looked to create an equivalent of the Wii Remote, considering that this type of unit may become standardized similar to how two-thumbstick controllers became a standard feature. However, it was still ultimately Microsoft's goal to remove any device between the player and the Xbox.

Kudo Tsunoda and Darren Bennett joined Microsoft in 2008, and began working with Kipman on a new approach to depth-sensing aided by machine learning to improve skeletal tracking. They internally demonstrated this and established where they believed the technology could be in a few years, which led to the strong interest to fund further development of the technology; this has also occurred at a time that Microsoft executives wanted to abandon the Wii-like motion tracking approach, and favored the depth-sensing solution to present a product that went beyond the Wii's capabilities. The project was greenlit by late 2008 with work started in 2009.

The project was codenamed "Project Natal" after the Brazilian city Natal, Kipman's birthplace. Additionally, Kipman recognized the Latin origins of the word "natal" to mean "to be born", reflecting the new types of audiences they hoped to draw with the technology. Much of the initial work was related to ethnographic research to see how video game players' home environments were laid out, lit, and how those with Wiis used the system to plan how Kinect units would be used. The Microsoft team discovered from this research that the up-and-down angle of the depth-sensing camera would either need to be adjusted manually, or would require an expensive motor to move automatically. Upper management at Microsoft opted to include the motor despite the increased cost to avoid breaking game immersion. Kinect project work also involved packaging the system for mass production and optimizing its performance. Hardware development took around 22 months.

During hardware development, Microsoft engaged with software developers to use Kinect. Microsoft wanted to make games that would be playable by families since Kinect could sense multiple bodies in front of it. One of the first internal titles developed for the device was the pack-in game '' Kinect Adventures'' developed by Good Science Studio that was part of Microsoft Studios. One of the game modes of ''Kinect Adventures'' was "Reflex Ridge", based on the Japanese Brain Wall game where players attempt to contort their bodies in a short time to match cutouts of a wall moving at them. This type of game was a key example of the type of interactivity they wanted with Kinect, and its development helped feed into the hardware improvements.

Nearing the planned release, there was a problem of widespread testing of Kinect in various room types and different bodies accounting for age, gender, and race among other factors, while keeping the details of the unit confidential. Microsoft engaged in a company-wide program offering employees to take home Kinect units to test them. Microsoft also brought other non-gaming divisions, including its Microsoft Research, Microsoft Windows, and Bing teams to help complete the system. Microsoft established its own large-scale manufacturing facility to bulk product Kinect units and test them.

Public reveals

Kinect was first announced to the public as "Project Natal" on June 1, 2009, during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2009; film director Steven Spielberg joined Microsoft's Don Mattrick to introduce the technology and its potential. Three demos were presented during the conference—Microsoft's ''Ricochet'' and ''Paint Party'', and Lionhead Studios' '' Milo & Kate'' created by Peter Molyneux—while a Project Natal-enabled version of Criterion Games' ''Burnout Paradise'' was shown during the E3 exhibition. By E3 2009, the skeletal mapping technology was capable of simultaneously tracking four people, with a feature extraction of 48 skeletal points on a human body at 30 Hz. Microsoft had not committed to a release date for Project Natal at E3 2009, but affirmed it would be after 2009, and likely in 2010 to stay competitive with the Wii and the PlayStation Move (Sony Interactive Entertainment's own motion-sensing system using hand-held devices).

In the months following E3 2009, rumors that a new Xbox 360 console associated with Project Natal emerged, either a retail configuration that incorporated the peripheral, or as a hardware revision or upgrade to support the peripheral. Microsoft dismissed the reports in public and repeatedly emphasized that Project Natal would be fully compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft indicated that the company considered Project Natal to be a significant initiative, as fundamental to Xbox brand as Xbox Live, and with a planned launch akin to that of a new Xbox console platform. Microsoft's vice president Shane Kim said the company did not expect Project Natal would extend the anticipated lifetime of the Xbox 360, which had been planned to last ten years through 2015, nor delay the launch of the successor to the Xbox 360.

Following the E3 2009 show and through 2010, the Project Natal team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability. Among these games were ''Beautiful Katamari'' and ''Space Invaders Extreme'', which were demonstrated at Tokyo Game Show in September 2009. According to Tsunoda, adding Project Natal-based control to pre-existing games involved significant code alterations, and made it unlikely that existing games could be patched through software updates to support the unit. Microsoft also expanded its draw to third-party developers to encourage them to develop Project Natal games. Companies like Harmonix and Double Fine quickly took to Project Natal and saw the potential in it, and committed to developing games for the unit, such as the launch title ''Dance Central'' from Harmonix.

Although its sensor unit was originally planned to contain a microprocessor that would perform operations such as the system's skeletal mapping, Microsoft reported in January 2010 that the sensor would no longer feature a dedicated processor. Instead, processing would be handled by one of the processor cores of Xbox 360's Xenon CPU. Around this time, Kipmen estimated that the Kinect would only take about 10 to 15% of the Xbox 360's processing power. While this was a small fraction of the Xbox 360's capabilities, industry observed believed this further pointed to difficulties in adapting pre-existing games to use Kinect, as the motion-tracking would add to a game's high computational load and exceed the Xbox 360's capabilities. These observed believed that instead the industry would develop games specific to the Kinect features.

Kinect for Xbox 360 marketing and launch

During Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference, it was announced that Project Natal would be officially branded as Kinect, and be released in North America on November 4, 2010. Xbox Live director Stephen Toulouse stated that the name was a portmanteau

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