“Apple’s approach to negotiations may have cost it the technology that powers Microsoft’s Kinect, an anecdote revealed today,” Electronista reports. “The CEO of technology creator PrimeSense, Inon Beracha, explained during a flight that he had shopped the motion control technology first to Apple but that the company had asked him to sign ‘crippling’ legal deals and non-disclosure agreements. With other companies very interested at the time, there was no reason to agree to Apple’s terms, Beracha told Cult of Mac’s Leander Kahney. ‘Apple is a pain in the ass,”‘ Beracha claimed.”
Electronista reports, “Apple’s unintentional sacrifice of the technology may have come from its ad hoc negotiation method which only recently became refined with full-time staff. The lack of a dedicated team, and an absence of pressure to complete a deal, ultimately cost it the acquisition of AdMob.”
Read more in the full article here.
Leander Kahney reports for Cult of Mac, “PrimeSense’s system is at the heart of Microsoft’s new Kinect game controller, which is getting rave reviews and looks set to be a monster hit. It’s a “crazy, magical, omigosh rush,” says the New York Times‘ David Pogue. And it almost belonged to Apple.”
Full article here.
@ZealotDetector
It would have been kind of stupid for Apple to buy it.
Steve Jobs: “Here’s our awesome new motion sensing videogame controller! Wait, what? We don’t make a videogame console? Oh. Well, shit…”
Also, I’ll go out on a limb and say the Kinect was ultimately a bad idea in the first place. The reviews are actually mixed, they say its motion detection can be shoddy, and there’s really nothing it does that that the Playstation Eye doesn’t already do, except for cost alot more money and take up more space. Oh, and have more hype behind it.
Even if Apple did make a console, I seriously doubt turning down PrimeSense would’ve been a loss. Hell, they weren’t even offering anything unique.
And they didn’t want AdMob either. Right?
@ZealotDetector
“…I bet if they had bought it, the response would have been how great Apple is. …”
1. How much do you want to wager?
2. How are we going to prove this bet?
Plus, if Apple had bought PrimeSense’s motion control technology, I’ll bet they would have made it even more awesome.
And I’ll bet Microsoft totally screws it up.
1. I’ll bet $100 on each scenario.
How big is the average person’s game room?
The Kinect requires 7-10 feet to work optimally and I am willing to bet that most people don’t have that kind of space in front of their TVs.
kinnect is great – for preteens that love to jump around. for everyone else, it will get old very fast. its UI is just too limited in scope while too much effort at the same time.
teens and grownups will want the Sony Move, now a better version of the Wii with much more gameplay abilities than Kinnect. the PS3 will sell well from now on.
but – as an add-on for the still-working xx million XBoxes, Kinnect will be very popular for those households with young kids. so it will sell a lot and be considered a success, depite its niche market.
the big loser here is Nintendo. the Wii HD should be going on sale now too, but Nintendo stupidly thought it could milk the old one for another year.
The real deal killer is Apple wanted it to recognize black people too.
It appears that Kinect is pretty useless in the daytime, it doesn’t like sunlight.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/11/review-kinect/
so it has a lot in common with the 360 then
‘pretty useless’
Soon there will be more monkeys jumping around than there are sane humans.
Saw an ad for this system several days before this article was posted, and I noticed the space requirements too.
Wondered why someone would want to pay the price of a Wii for an add-on that needs that much working area.
People talk about Move being a Wii copy. In fact Kinect looks more like Wii than Kinect. Why?
Because Sony is pushing Move to be used as a controller for “real” games. Shooters are going to fit perfectly with move, because it has analogs and is more precise than the Wiimote (besides being used with a much superior console). There’ll always be “flay your arms around” type games, but Move has the potential to substitute the DualShock.
Kinect, on the other hand, is nothing but a gimmick piece, just like Wii was. Wii sales exploded at first, and many people said it was better than xbox or ps3 because of it (that was, and still is, annoying to hear), but there are nearly zero good games for the Wii.
And that’s exactly what’s happening with Kinect. You can’t put it to control Modern Warfare or Mass Effect. Only those useless party games. And it pains me to hear Pogue talking about it as if it were a big deal. He’s got no idea what the fuck he’s talking about
@R2 Except that kinect already does a “Minority Reporty thingy”, and it is the same ergonomic disaster that a desktop with a touchscreen
Beracha IS A PAIN IN THE ASS…
Apple should be happy they didn’t get this crappy technology.
I have no idea what Apple would have done with this technology. They are not a game box maker and have stayed away from gaming in general.
Therefore, despite the fact that the developer is a sucker to go with Microsoft, he’s making sales residuals right now as opposed to having the tech sit and gather dust at Apple.
Meanwhile, watching the Kinect ads, all I can say is ‘BFD’. Eventually there might be a virtual reality killer app for it. But what I’m seeing is as exciting as dancing in a mirror. Yawn.
Apple (unfortunately) has shown little interest in gaming on their platform. I don’t see this integrating well with any current products. And from what I hear, you need a 6×6 foot playing area for it to work. I’m sure eventually it will be worth getting, but for now it sounds like version 1.0 tech.