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Microsoft dumps Gore Verbinski's Kinect game Matter

Obviously does not see Black Pearl in the rough.

The Gore Verbinski Kinect game Matter has been ditched by Microsoft.

Gore Verbinski is the Hollywood director of Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango.

Matter was the game announced at Microsoft's E3 2012 press conference. A video showed an orb floating through an abstract landscape of shifting cubes. That orb was to be a control surface (perhaps you rolled it with your hands). It sounded like a puzzle game, and it was due out on Xbox Live Arcade this year.

Cover image for YouTube videoE3 2012: Matter

"Microsoft Studios is no longer pursuing this title," a company robot told Joystiq. "We have no further details to share at this time."

The idea for Matter, which was in development at Blind Wink Games, came from Gore Verbinski thinking that "in your physical motion, your emotion actually comes through" - or so Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer told Joystiq.

On he waffled: "To a lot of people who haven't played games for a long time, somebody standing completely stationary with a controller in their hands kind of seems emotionless, even though we know that we'll be sweating or twitching.

"And [it was] his feeling, that with motion and movement, that the connection of the emotion that's happening on screen and how the player feels would be more natural."

And then Gore Verbinski tried Kinect. Cackle.

Incidentally, Microsoft walking away from the project doesn't necessarily mean it will never be made, although that's an exceedingly likely outcome.