Microsoft upgraded Kinect to make Steel Battalion better

Key development houses don't simply get access to new hardware yonks before the rest of us; the biggest cheeses also get a say on the make-up of that hardware. Gears of War graphics wizard Tim Sweeney claims Microsoft expanded Xbox 360's memory buffer in part at Epic's suggestion, and the manufacturer has also, reportedly, overhauled Kinect's capabilities to better facilitate Capcom's Steel Battalion: Heavy Armour.

"Microsoft and Capcom have been in it from the start on this," the game's producer Kenji Kataoka told Eurogamer. "Initially, when we started testing Steel Battalion on Kinect, the movement recognition was done by area. It detected where your hands are, and that's how the program tried to see what you were trying to do.

"But obviously, because Steel Battalion is fairly complicated, recognition by area wasn't good enough. So Microsoft developed another whole set of technology that meant it recognised actual gestures, not the absolute area.

"Now it's a combination of coordinates, area and gestures. That adds a lot more accuracy. It now can detect what your intentions are just by small movement rather than the absolute coordinate of where your hands are. In the end it turned out really well, but we really had to grill it to the last with Microsoft to make this happen."

Microsoft "had to come up with a whole library in the SDK [software development kit] in collaboration with us to develop a whole new concept of using Kinect," Kataoka went on. "We walked with them on this, and here we are, sitting down with Kinect works."

Out next month, the new Steel Battalion is shaping up nicely; according to Kataoka, it's the most accurate Kinect game out there. Or at least, the most accurate known Kinect game. "I obviously can't tell for the ones that are not out, but against the ones that are already out, I do think we've gone the deepest and we've checked every single alley and potential Kinect can offer."

We wonder what Crytek has to say about all this? Little has been seen of the Crysis studio's first-person Roman-puncher Ryse since announce.

Microsoft began hiring for work on "compelling and innovative" Kinect software in January.