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Sunday, November 7, 2010

Will Kinect Support Netflix?

With the Kinect launch being a complete success(I think anyways...), gamers around the world have been controlling Xbox 360 Kinect games and Hub with full-body motion. And most are happy with just that.

But some have been left a bit disappointed. And why you may ask? Well...there's no Netflix support just yet. And this factor is a big one. Some gamers bought Kinect just for full Netflix motion controls. Other(like me) bought Kinect for the games, and of course, being the Netflix fan that I am, controlling Netflix with my my hands would definitely be a big bonus.

Microsoft has not made any announcement yet whether or not Netflix will be supported, but they did say that "certain features" will not be made available at launch. Do you feel that you've been misled by no Netflix support at launch?

Honestly, I don't really feel THAT misled. It does suck that Netflix is yet to be supported, but I can see why it isn't...yet. It could be a number of reasons. From technical issues at last minute, to Netflix not wanting to support Kinect. It could be anything. Hell..it could even be that they wanted to wait to release Netflix for Kinect when Hulu launches early next year.

When I first bought my Kinect, brought it home and hooked it up, I didn't immediately say, "Where's Netflix support?". I actually played around with it a bit, learned how to properly use it, play Kinect Adventures(which is awesome, by the way!), etc. It was a day later when I realized, "Oh yeah...I wanna watch an episode of The Office...", so then I went to the Kinect Hub and noticed that Zune was there, Last.fm was there, even ESPN was there, but Netflix was no where to be found, I was like, "What?", but wasn't immediately angered by that fact.

I then went to Google and searched for answers. I found some news on it, lots of forum posts, but nothing from Microsoft.

Anyways, Netflix will be supported. Trust me, if the streaming service is not supported, I can say that many gamers/users will be really, really disappointed even more so than now. And also extremely bad marketing on Microsoft's part especially when Netflix is shown in the Kinect Hub in all those videos. I just watched a 'very recent' Kinect video on Xbox Live that showed Netflix in the Kinect Hub. So I think if Netflix isn't going to be supported, I would imagine all those videos would be taken down and remade so that Netflix isn't shown, giving false hope to everyone who dreamed of having full-motion control over the popular streaming service.

I guess we'll see, hopefully sometime in Nov. and no later, even so much as an explanation as to why Netflix wasn't supported at launch.

What do you think? Are you happy with not having full-motion Netflix? Or are you just happy with the fact that you can control every aspect of Kinect Adventures with just full-body movement? I'm with the latter.

 

 

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

To be honest, I use my XBOX mainly for the netflix feature. It was the one feature that the other systems (at the time) did not offer. So, when i saw the Kinect....and then the demo displaying Netflix...I was hooked. Upon getting it home, setting it up and tuning....That was the first app I looked for, the second was "Facebook" which is also not there.
So, Yes...I do feel a little misled, and i wish for a explanation from microsoft. But I fear "hell may freeze over" before that reality comes to light.