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In its continuing quest to become Sony circa 2007, Microsoft has now declared rumble to be a rudimentary, archaic, outdated form of controller feedback. With his tongue wedged firmly up Kinect’s invisible arse, Kudo Tsunoda has declared that moving around is far greater than feeling a vibration in your hand, and if you disagree, then your position is “laughable.”

“… Even people playing games with a controller, there’s always people doing this [mimes driving motion]. They want to be moving.,” claims the Microsoft producer. “There’s natural movements and reactions involved. I’ve never seen someone doing that from rumble. It’s the audiovisual stuff.

“The overwhelming thing we’ve discovered is that rumble is such a rudimentary form of haptic feedback. It’s not like a little rumble in your palm is your whole way of interacting with the world — it’s not like, oh, I stubbed my toe and I get a little rumble in my palm.

“It’s almost laughable the way people hold on to rumble as the holy grail of haptic feedback. We’ve gone so far past anything that can be done with rumble, or that kind of restrictive thing you have to hold. It’s been creatively liberating to work on this stuff.”

So there you have it. Controllers are f*cking pathetic, whereas Kinect is the salvation of videogames as we know it. No one comes to the Father save through Microsoft … sorry, that should be MicroSony.

Kudo Tsunoda: “Rumble Is Rudimentary” [Edge]

Sure, sometimes I stand up from the couch to shout at my television when playing a frustrating game. But in general, I won’t be standing up unless the game calls for it. Wondering if you’ll be able to remain planted in your seat when using Microsoft’s motion sensing Kinect device? Yes… sometimes.

“Kinect can be used while sitting when an experience is developed with sitting in mind,” Microsoft clarified to Joystiq. As an example, Microsoft mentioned Dashboard navigation, which would include things like watching video, Video Kinect chat, and more. Outside of the Dashboard stuff, all of the Kinect offerings we saw at E3 required the player be standing. You think people look silly playing Dance Central, imagine what they’d look like trying to play that game sitting down.

But there likely will be software that will keep the player’s buttocks firmly planted in seats — Microsoft says what was shown earlier this year was “only the tip of the iceberg.” Lazy gamers around the globe hope they show us the rest of the the iceberg — the slothful parts — before Kinect launches this holiday.

Kinect software will work with seated player when ‘developed with sitting in mind’ [Joystiq]

It seems that Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to ensure that Kinect is popular, proving that if you can’t win the hearts of the people with a good product, you can do it with boatloads of cash. Cirque du Soleil, Justin Bieber, and now Burger King have been recruited by Microsoft in th great casual war, the latter being used to promote Kinectimals. 

Burger King will be giving away little stuffed animals that can be scanned by Kinect’s camera to create a digital alternative. They can then be played with by your pet Kinectimal, which should fascinate anybody reading this who happens to be seven-years-old. 

As much as I make fun of Kinect, I can’t deny that Microsoft has gone all out in the marketing for it, and this could see it get some pretty decent initial sales. By contrast, Sony’s done a lot of sitting on its product and just expecting things to sell, as it’s often wont to do. If PlayStation Move is to tackle Kinect, it’s going to need more than a few cute Kevin Butler ads, methinks. 

As far as this Kinectimals nonsense goes, it’ll be out in November. I LOVE YOU SPRINKLES!

Burger King and Kinectimals team up for a playable promotion [GamesRadar]

Evil Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has claimed that he is frustrated by the current online business model put out by Microsoft. Of course, it’s not concern for consumers or the simple fact that Xbox Live is a massive con that has upset the flame-haired demon, it’s classic greed. He’s just annoyed that Microsoft benefits more from Xbox Live than publishers like Activision.

“We’ve heard that 60% of subscribers are principally on Live because of Call Of Duty,” Kotick said. “We don’t really participate financially in that income stream. We would really like to be able to provide much more value to those millions of players playing on Live, but it’s not our network.”

“We have always been platform agnostic. [Consoles] do a very good job of supporting the gamer. If we are going to broaden our audiences, we are going to need to have other devices.”

Kotick actually raises an interesting point, that Microsoft is able to benefit from any game you’d buy Xbox Live for, and the publisher of that game doesn’t benefit outside of the initial sale. That said, however, this stuff never sounds good coming from an Activision executive, especially one who thinks fans are “clamoring” for a subscription-based Call of Duty. I’d rather have Microsoft nickel-and-diming us than Activision, if one company has to.

Kotick Frustrated By Xbox Live Model [Edge]

Remember that really creepy demo of Kinect when it was first unveiled as Project Natal last year? I’m talking about the one with the kid who fished and made everyone watching him feel vaguely uncomfortable. At the time, we were under the impression that this was going to someday be a retail product.

Not so, according to Aaron Greenberg. Australian TV program Good Game asked the Xbox boss about the Milo demo, where he stated that the demo still existed and had been refined but there were no plans to make it a game. 

It’s funny how I’d managed to put Milo completely out of my mind. I didn’t even notice his absence at E3 until this mention of it. It’s also interesting to note that there wasn’t anything on display that demonstrated the same level of technical wizardry. Makes you wonder what happened to some of the grander ideas, like the item recognition, and whether we’ll see them again.

28 June  2010  E3 2010: World Exclusives part 2 [Good Game via Kotaku]

While this might just be one of those things that is getting blown out of proportion thanks to the fact that the previous model of the Xbox 360 crashed more often than a Kennedy on a bender, it has been reported that the new Xbox 360 “Slims” are getting a “Dot of Death” from overheating much as their predecessors did.

The new 360s cannot get a RRoD, of course, because they have no red lights and they have that handy shutdown feature, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping them from crashing. Microsoft has responded to the issue with this quote:

“We couldn’t be more proud of the consoles we are building now, as well as the new Xbox 360. This console is the culmination of years of continuous innovation in design, testing and learning. Today we are confident we are shipping a high quality product.”

Uhhh, thanks for not responding to the issue at all. Glad you think you’ve been innovating and all that, but if these new 360s are going to pull the same sh*t the old ones did we’re just going to have to keep buying them and playing your games like we did on those as well. That’ll show you, Microsoft.

Microsoft Responds To 360 Red Dot Claims [NowGamer, via Ripten]

Square Enix has said that Final Fantasy XIV is not coming to the Xbox 360, and blamed the decision squarely on Microsoft’s own infrastructure. Claiming that the 360 is too “closed” for the upcoming MMO, Square Enix has confirmed that XIV will remain exclusive to the PS3 on consoles. For now, anyway. 

“The main reason why we couldn’t go with Xbox 360 was the Xbox Live system,” explained game director Hiromichi Tanaka. ”[Live is] different to the normal internet environment, so when we wanted to introduce this game in the same environment as Windows PC it had to be PS3, so that was our choice.

“Microsoft has a different point of view: they want to have a closed environment for Xbox Live. We’re still talking to… We couldn’t come to an agreement on Xbox Live.”

That’s our Microsoft, screwing its consoles and customers out of one of the biggest markets in this industry, just because it wants to act like a big grasping Fagin over the realm of online gaming. Keep on trucking!

“Closed” Xbox Live Blocked FFXIV [Eurogamer]

If you own an Xbox 360 you know the most annoying thing about it is the RRoD. You probably know the second most annoying thing about it as well, and that is that it can scratch the sh*t out of your discs. Nothing like plopping down $60 bucks just to get home and have the game ruined because your console destroyed it.

You’d think this would be something the Microsoft would take care in their new version of the console since it seems they’ve taken care of many of the other issues the console had. Think again. Our intrepid E3 team tested the console out with an Alan Wake disc and then Nick decided to move it. Suddenly all hell breaks loose. Goodbye, Alan Wake.

Sure, there was a sticker on the damn thing saying not to move it, but it isn’t like he was tossing it around the room. They’re planning on having gesticulating children play Kinect anywhere near this thing? Some games are going to be getting destroyed, people. Looks like everyone needs to be really, really careful around their new 360s while they are on or their games are going to get wrecked.

So far, we haven’t really heard much about iPhone gaming at E3 — the focus has mainly been on the consoles and the PC. That doesn’t mean, however, that people have forgotten about Apple or mobile gaming.

Microsoft is very interesting in trying to horn in on that market, and their latest move shows they’re fairly serious about it. According to Pocket Gamer, Microsoft is now offering iPhone developers up-front cash to port their iPhone games to the new Windows Phone 7s. Unfortunately for Microsoft, developers appear to be declining the offer — there’s too much work involved in recoding the games into Silverlight or XNA framework.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft ups the ante. Do you think the Windows Phone 7 will be able to take on the iPhone, or is Microsoft just wasting money on a futile endeavor?

Microsoft is paying developers to port iPhone games to Windows Phone 7 [Pocket Gamer via AppleInsider]