Xbox working on next-gen Avatars and new project from Kinect creator
Xbox has a couple of new projects in the works this year.
Kinect creative director Kudo Tsunoda will reveal his new project this year, according to Xbox boss Phil Spencer.
Given Tsunoda's past experience with Kinect, it's worth a small flutter on the possibility of Microsoft joining the VR race alongside Sony's Project Morpheus. Gamespot also noted that Microsoft is believed to have a wearable - something like Google Glass - in the works.
Whatever Tsunoda's project is we'll almost certainly see it at E3 2015, but the other secret project may take a little longer as it seems to be in the early stages: next-gen avatars.
According to a couple of job ads spotted by DualShockers, Microsoft wants to revamp Avatars to take advantage of the additional power and features of the Xbox One, as well as the unified gaming environment we're expecting to debut with Windows 10.
The adds mention "higher fidelity" toons ("leveraging the power of Xbox One" but also "not only gorgeous, but highly performant across a wide scale of devices"), cross-platform Avatar use, and that the new personas will take their place on "a bigger stage in new Xbox experiences".
I don't feel much excited by either of this prospects, honestly, but then I've never been much invested in the whole social connectivity side of gaming. And it occurs to me that I don't know what possible Microsoft or Sony announcement I would be excited by.
What advances and innovations are you all hoping to see come out of the platform holders' conferences at E3 2015? Besides games, obviously.