People with darker skin are reporting that the facial recognition in Xbox via Kinect is not working for them. So is Xbox racist or there is another problem with Kinect?

The other day, after repositioning of Xbox I again had problems with facial recognition in certain Kinect games, so I had Twitter exchange with official @XboxSupport Twitter account powered by Microsoft employees, but the result was sadly negative: not only was my problems not resolved but I was misled!

Firstly Microsoft claimed that it’s nonsense that I can have any problems because Kinect was tested (remember that testing of Windows Mobile and how miserable it was? no! Testing: it’s just opportunity for Microsoft employees to travel to places like Japan, but total failure overall):

I can assure you that Kinect was thoroughly tested by customers around the globe. ^FX

Clearly it was answer by a very lazy and incompetent Microsoft employee, probably a manager or a person with a low IQ.

Then they suggested that I should remove Kinect ID (such thingy that Kinect can recognize your gob even if you play Kinect in a group of people):

You can remove Kinect ID if you wish. This link should help you out: http://t.co/zW6rgEL

… what was not working because I couldn’t get to “remove” Kinect ID button because facial recognition was working badly for me.

Then they gave me advice to run Kinect Tuner:

Could you run the Kinect Tuner again, please? ^LB

… which didn’t help because Tuner was saying that it can see me (facial recognition works) but I couldn’t move through Kinect ID field of green squares to get to Kinect ID removal button!

Also this advice didn’t help as I had already placed several additional lights in the room:

And please make sure your room’s lighting conditions are optimal. ^LB

Another totally useless piece of advice was this:

Could you fully disconnect Kinect and plug it back in? ^LB

I did it, it didn’t help in the least.

Another advice was to move the Kinect sensor up:

How far from the floor is the sensor? ^LB

… so I moved it and it helped a bit insofar as now I managed to pass the “move to green square” test and I could see “remove” button to remove Kinect ID … but it was all in vain!!! Still games were forcing me to go through facial recognition and only after many times failing facial recognition I was getting the ID selection menu.

Total lack of understanding of the problem could be seen in this subsequent tweet:

You should be able to sign in using the normal dashboard hub and launch the game without going through Kinect ID. ^LB

… because it simply is not working: there is no way to disable facial recognition so that games can’t demand it. So if you are dark-skinned or your lighting is not “optimal” you can never ever or very rarely make the facial recognition work.

In other words, instead of playing games you are wasting time on facial recognition nonsense. Other corporations, like Apple, would prohibit user-hostile user experience but Microsoft is just blaming it on developers/publishers:

It looks like this is an issue other players have had as well. You’ll want to get in touch with the game’s publisher for… ^LB
…
Let us know if you’re able to get in touch with the game’s publisher for further help. ^LB

… but after googling a bit (nobody sane is using Windows Phone or Bing) I found that indeed other players complain about some games forcing facial recognition that is not working well on users.

However Microsoft putting blame on game publisher shows Microsoft’s incompetence: clearly facial recognition technology of Microsoft is failing so instead of giving users ability to disable it, they are counting on publishers to lessen the requirement for sign-in.

So if facial recognition is failing for your particular case because you are not white whitey white, or because your lighting is not perfect, then you have to go through many failed trials to get to the ID selection menu. Pure waste of time with shared fault of Microsoft and publishers, whereby Microsoft could disable it at system level and remove the problem… so maybe problem of Microsoft only after all.

So is Kinect racist? It works worse on people with dark skin (as suggested in many videos) – despite the fact that Kinect sensor has infrared so turning on light shouldn’t be necessary.

But also: Microsoft is very incompetent and allows for user-hostile behavior of games. It’s awful.

Conclusion: Xbox Kinect is waste of time – just don’t buy it. And the reason is not only the fact that it has too few appealing Kinect games but also facial recognition that is forced upon users and that is very unreliable, makes whole gaming experience a pain. Just wait for Nintendo Wii 2 in 2012 or for Kinect-competitor from Sony – I can only assume that they will not force facial recognition on users if it will not be reliable, or that they will make it possible to disable facial recognition on system level and to let developers focus on what is most important: playing games.

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