The Kinect is currently in purgatory, attached to older Xbox Ones, cut from many newer models, and sold separately starting this fall. And at this stage in its lifecycle, it's actually newsworthy when a game announces that it will indeed be utilizing the motion/voice control system while most other titles are content to ignore it.
Forza Horizon 2 will use the device, according to the game's creative director, Ralph Fulton, speaking to the Examiner.
"We're still really excited about including Kinect. It offers opportunities we wouldn't normally otherwise have. We don't currently have it plugged in to demonstrate today, but Kinect will be involved with a feature called ANNA. She is your digital personal assistant and navigation in the game. She is also very intelligent and will suggest things to do in the game and give you a recap when you return to the games. She will also alert you when friends are online."
The items he lists are more about ANNA talking to you, rather than you talking to her, but I assume if she's "Kinect-enhanced" the system works both ways, and you can tell her to do this or that through voice commands.
But again, even when a game does include Kinect capability, it reinforces why the peripheral is now optional rather than mandatory. When people saw
While the Kinect may be able to enhance games in minor ways (usually through voice commands, as gesture still has a long way to go), it just didn't make itself essential enough to warrant a higher priced bundle, and therefore the separation was inevitable.
Still, this ANNA reminds me a bit of what things could have been like if things went the other way with Kinect. If instead of cutting it, Microsoft announced a host of new features like full integration with "Cortana," their Halo themed, Siri-killing operating system AI. That very well may happen in the future, but now with Kinect being optional, it won't be quite as impactful. And I half expected Microsoft to announce some sort of VR system that would pair with Kinect for body tracking, but there hasn't even been a whiff of a rumor of a device like that in the works.
Anyway, it's good to see the Kinect hasn't been entirely abandoned by at least Microsoft-exclusive titles, but ANNA seems to show the limited uses of the peripheral that rendered it a problem for the Xbox One in the first place.
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