Microsoft Demonstrates The Value Of Kinect And Entertainment Apps

In the early days of the marketing for Xbox One, many gamers were turned off by the publisher’s insistence on showing off UI and entertainment features more than actual games. Months passed and Microsoft tuned down the multimedia hype, focusing instead on satisfying gamers after a disastrous E3. With many of these restrictive features (online check-ins, no used games, etc) now a thing of the past, it’s a good time to revisit the unique UI of the upcoming console. I had a chance to see it in action at a recent Microsoft event, and now have a better understanding of why the publisher was pushing these features so hard early on.

At first glance, the Xbox One dashboard isn’t strikingly different than the 360’s. It’s presented with the same Windows 8-style colored boxes as the previous console, and many features make their return. The main screen allows players to jump into their game and access several recently-viewed apps. Moving one screen to the left accesses your favorites via the pins menu. To the right of the main screen is the store section, which features tabs for games, movies, television, and music. Overall, the core sections of the new dashboard seem more streamlined and simple than those on the 360.

Microsoft’s initial plan to require Kinect makes more sense now that I’ve seen just how integrated it is in the UI. Logging in no longer requires going through menus and selecting user profiles with the controller. Kinect can now recognize up to six individuals in a room, and will automatically log in each user. Facial recognition was supposed to be a function of the original Kinect, but it rarely worked. Microsoft claims that the new tech in Xbox One’s Kinect will be much more reliable in this regard.

If multiple people (up to six) are in the same room, Kinect will recognize them and automatically sign them in without the use of controllers or menus. Let’s say Person A is the primary user, and the menus are populated with their pins and theme selections. All Person B (or C,D, etc.) has to do is say “Xbox, show my stuff.” The theme and pins change accordingly, as do any favorite cable channels in the TV section.

Kinect’s tech is no longer dependent on light conditions, so it’ll work just as well in pitch black as it will under studio lights. Motion is only half of the Kinect equation, as voice commands are a staple of Xbox One’s user experience. At any point during gameplay, you can say “Xbox, snap [Netflix, Hulu, Skype, etc],” and the appropriate app will slide into the right portion of the screen. If you’re grinding for XP in an RPG or burning through some mindless multiplayer matches, it should be awesome to seamlessly load up episodes of The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live without having to mess around with menus.

During gameplay, you can also make sure that your proudest gaming moments are captured on your hard drive. If you’ve just won a race in Forza by a fraction of a second or took down a fighting boss with a sliver of life left, saying “Xbox, record that” will cause the console to save the previous 30 seconds of footage to the hard drive. By going into the Upload Studio app, you can even record picture-in-picture commentary before you upload it to the servers. 

The amount of things you can do with Kinect and the UI is very impressive, and the list of commands and features is long. Skype calls look fantastic in fullscreen, and the camera does a great job of tracking subjects around a room. The Xbox Fitness service will give gamers free access to popular home exercise programs like P90X and Insanity for the first year (additional programs can be purchased piecemeal at any point). Achievements will eventually be made available in entertainment apps, so you might earn some points for things like watching the entire Godfather trilogy.

Like many gamers, I was skeptical of their early focus on entertainment apps over games. Now that I’ve seen it in action, I believe that its interface and Kinect integration are great tools, and will have a positive impact on the overall experience of the console. The more I see of the next generation of gaming, the more excited I get.