Spencer: Kinect Is An Important Investment, Has Roadmap For Hololens & Xbox One, Touts Games Line-up

In a post show interview with Geoff Keighley, Xbox Boss Phil Spencer spoke about developing for Kinect and how they have a road map for Hololens and Xbox One. “We have lots of engineers that work on the Kinect functionality to support third parties and games that are being developed with Kinect. So it’s an important investment for us to make sure that the platform is great. The technology in Hololens is actually similar to the same team because the backend technology for gesture and voice is the same. So there is a lot of investment in that space. As Hololens gaming takes off you might see more games coming for the Kinect just as more people get themselves adapted to using motion and voice.”

So when can players expect Hololens? “We haven’t announced a date. We are really focused on the experience. We need to get the experiences right before we think about release date and price. That’s what is great about having the Mojang team. This is the experience that feel authentic to Minecraft and Hololens, and having the first party team partner with the platform team is just a unique opportunity.”

He also talks about the camera perspective which shown off during the Hololens demonstration. “He obviously seems from the same perspective when he looks at the table and for a game like Minecraft, it seems pretty natural.”

He also confirmed that the demonstration was independent of the Xbox One and all the computing is in the Hololens itself.

Spencer also revealed that they have plans to make Hololens and Xbox One work with each other.

“We have been working on that and in fact there were some demos that we are looking to put around the television and have the Hololens on. On the stage, it will be kind of hard to do it but we have a good road map for Xbox customers when they own a Hololens, and have those two corraborate but this [demonstration] is standalone Hololens running Minecraft.”

And finally Spencer explained why he is confident regarding Xbox One’s games line-up for 2015.

“We have Gears, Forza, Halo, Call off Duty. I mean you look at the line up from 1st and 3rd party, it’s an incredible time to be a gamer. A few years ago, people were asking do people need consoles? Now both [PS4 and Xbox One] are selling incredibly well and the content is fantastic.”