Military, medical institutions, and the movie industry......Junk Hunter Yoshida talks about his Xbox, which is very active in unexpected fields! No.3]

This time, I'd like to talk a little bit about Xbox. I've been called a "flame-loving Internet arsonist" by game enthusiasts, and I'm going the way of the heel, but if I talk seriously, my public image may be damaged... ...However, it is our mission as mass media to report the various aspects of the environment surrounding the Xbox in the U.S., which are not well known in Japan, as accurately as possible (in a good cause).

The Xbox360 controller is a big hit in the U.S. military! Xbox360 Controller

In 2008, the U.S. military took notice of the explosive success of the Xbox360 and decided to use the CPU cells in SEA's PlayStation3. In 2008, when the government announced that the U.S. Air Force was going to introduce the system for research purposes to use the CPU cells in SIE's PlayStation3 (eventually purchasing about 2,000 units), Microsoft's camp, not wanting to be outdone (or not), made a sales pitch to the U.S. government. The U.S. military originally adopted Microsoft's microprocessors for military technology, which later evolved into unmanned aircraft and drone technology. This fact suggests that the company actually had a bigger pipeline to the U.S. military than Sony.

One of the most surprising stories I heard from a US military acquaintance who works at Yokosuka Air Base was that the Xbox 360 controller is very useful in the Army and Air Force because it works well with PCs and is highly versatile. Some controllers were disassembled and customized for use with unmanned probes, while others were used to control drones using the Xbox 360's white controller.

One of the reasons for this is that Xbox 360 FPS games were used as simulators in the U.S. military's training of soldiers. In other words, the soldiers were already familiar with the Xbox 360 controller, and they thought there was no need to create a new controller for the drones.

At first I thought he was kidding and making fun of me, but then it turned out to be true, as the Xbox 360 controller has often appeared in military-oriented Hollywood movies, such as Andrew Niccol's "Drone of War".

The Xbox 360 controller is not only used in the air, but also on land. During a ground expedition in the dangerous region of Syria in the Middle East during the civil war, an unmanned exploration vehicle with a caterpillar like the robot "Number Five" from John Badham's film "Short Circuit" was used with a custom model Xbox 360 wireless controller with a small monitor attached, They were checking out the interior of the building, which could not be seen from the air. I'm sure there are some experts out there who have read this far and said, "It's outrageous that Microsoft is releasing a game console that is complicit in killing people! But Microsoft is not making Xboxes for the military industry, and if you say that, if a person who bought a kitchen knife commits murder with it, it would be the same as saying, "Selling kitchen knives is a problem! It would be the same as "Selling knives is the problem!

In other words, it's up to the person using it. The U.S. military happened to realize that the Xbox 360 controller was superior (yay!) They just started using it for unmanned probes. Incidentally, there are no killer drones that can bomb using the Xbox 360 controller. They are only used for exploration purposes.

Kinect has unearthed a new gaming user base.

To further illustrate Microsoft's impressive efforts, and this is mainly in the U.S., the Xbox 360 is still in use in medical facilities. You may be thinking, "What's an Xbox 360 in the medical field?" You may be thinking, "How is an Xbox 360 used in the medical field?" But the Kinect motion sensor, a peripheral device released in 2010, is being used to great effect.

Although it did not become popular in Japan, where the home environment is mainly small and cramped, it was a big hit in the United States. I had heard from Microsoft's U.S. subsidiary that the main target audience for Kinect was the wealthy people who live in houses with large living rooms. I can't hide my surprise at the fact that 35 million Kinect units were sold.

In 2004, SIE launched the "EyeToy" peripheral with a camera for the PS2, but it was a flop.

EyeToy" had a weakness in that it did not have a microphone function, but from "PlayStation Eye" a voice recognition function was added, and in 2010, the motion controller "PlayStation Move" was released, enabling operation like Nintendo's "Wii". We asked Microsoft, "Wasn't Kinect created with the PlayStation Eye in mind?" When we asked Microsoft if Kinect was created with the PlayStation Eye in mind, they admitted that it was, but added, "The disappointing part of the PlayStation Eye was that we didn't promote it extensively and only slightly expanded the game play experience. We picked up where Sony left off with Kinect, and the concept of making the Xbox360 accessible to people with physical disabilities was a hidden theme in the development team.

As if to back up this statement, in the United States, where there are many veterans = many disabled people, Kinect will be the catalyst that will give a big boost to the sales of Xbox 360. The Kinect became the talk of the town in the handicapped community, as it allowed disabled people to enjoy games, and the Xbox 360 and Kinect were introduced at once to rehabilitation facilities and facilities for the disabled. As a result, the Xbox 360 and Kinect were quickly introduced to rehabilitation facilities and facilities for the disabled. This led to an increased awareness of disability welfare at Microsoft in the U.S., and the company began to focus on social welfare as well. Such matters have not been reported in Japan.

Surprising Relationship between the Movie Industry and Xbox

Officially, Kinect was released as an exclusive device for Xbox 360, but volunteers developed an open-source driver so that it could also be used on PCs, and it has been customized on an ever-evolving basis.

Microsoft responded by officially providing a development kit for Windows, expanding Kinect's versatility. At the same time, Kinect was used in a variety of fields.

At a U.S. film production site I once visited, a large number of Kinects were set up in the studio for pre-visualization (video containers) work created with computer graphics. It is used as a simple motion capture tool running on Windows. The stuntmen who were substituting for the actors were tracing their spectacular action moves. When asked by a staff member on site, he said, "Kinect is very useful in the film industry because of its cost-effectiveness. Many studios that cannot afford expensive sets for motion capture are starting to use Kinect. It's a simple motion capture system, but from here you can add hand-added motion. Game developers are also using Kinect to create movie parts for their games, and Kinect is more useful in the U.S. than can be imagined in Japan. The variety of ways in which Kinect can be used in addition to playing games is astonishing, and we cannot hide our surprise at the fact that it has become so popular without us Japanese knowing about it.

The current version of the Kinect, the Xbox ONE Kinect, has made it possible to capture finger motion capture, and the infrared camera function has made it possible to capture motion capture in dark places. This is one of the reasons why Kinect has become an indispensable tool in the field of filming.

In the end, I personally think that the reason why Kinect did not become popular in Japan is not only because of the housing situation in Japan (Kinect and the subject needed to be stroked), but also because of the lack of flexibility in thinking like Americans. I think it is because they were not as flexible in their thinking as the Americans.

As I interviewed them, I saw the reality that "Wii" and "Wii Fit" are still utilized in rehabilitation medical facilities in Japan, but I was saddened to see that Kinect has never even been seen. This may be due not only to the difference in culture and awareness on the user side between Nintendo, a Japanese company, and Microsoft, an American company, but also to the difference in user enthusiasm about how much the Xbox series is loved by Americans.

(Text by Junk Hunter Yoshida)