Chris Sutherland and Gavin Price of Playtonic, formerly of Rare, have spoken about Rare's transition into Microsoft's premier Kinect developers, and their time working with the technology.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Sutherland and Price shared their memories of early Kinect demos. "It was definitely about games," said Price. "Everyone asked the designers to go away and think up different ideas for this device."

Kinect Sports was originally supposed to be more complex. Gavin Price said: "But I remember at some point, the feedback came down from Don Mattrick I believe, and it was: 'No, just give us Wii Sports with Kinect.'"

There was also supposed to be a Wiimote-esque controller for Kinect. "That was something we'd been working with the platform team on," Price said. "But the advent of Kinect pushed that out to one side."

Early on, the development team ran into troubles with getting Kinect to work, and with how best to introduce people to the idea of using it. "We had so many different forms of the text that said 'raise hand to start'," said Chris Sutherland. "We had 'lift your hand above your head' - but then some people would place their hands over their heads as if they were about to pat it."

According to Eurogamer's interview, "surprisingly, there appears to have been little interest in recreating one of Rare's proven IPs with Kinect." Both Sutherland and Price think that picking up an old franchise might have been better for Rare than going all in on Kinect and Kinect Sports.


However they don't blame Microsoft for "Rare's transformation into a so-called "casual" studio." Price says that "it was people in Rare's management at the time who said: 'Well, Kinect is a great opportunity for the studio - go all in on it.'... Everybody likes to create this narrative that Microsoft are evil, but that's not the case - they were very supportive. I guess there were a few people who have since left who thought: 'I wanted to be working on this game or my pet project, and I didn't get to.' And they've kind of painted a picture that it's all Microsoft's fault."