Tsunoda: Kinect goes way past rumble

Microsoft Game Studios general manager and chief Kinect cheerleader Kudo Tsunoda has said it's "almost laughable the way people hold on to rumble as the holy grail of haptic feedback".

"The overwhelming thing we've discovered is that rumble is such a rudimentary form of haptic feedback," Tsunoda told Edge at E3.

Tsunoda, whose lively physical performances have been a mainstay of Kinect presentations since it was first unveiled as Project Natal at E3 2009, admitted that at first he was cautious about a technology that offered no physical feedback, but said that players' responses to the visuals were different when they used their bodies as controllers.

"We've gone so far past anything that can be done with rumble, or that kind of restrictive thing you have to hold," he said. "It's been creatively liberating to work on this stuff."

Tsunoda isn't the first videogames exec to have a pop at rumble, of course - then-boss of Sony Worldwide Studios Phil Harrison famously defended the loss of rumble in the original PS3 Sixaxis controller by saying it was a bit old hat, which made the fickle old internet rather cross.

Sony later introduced it in the DualShock 3 revision of the pad - not really an option physically available to Microsoft with Kinect, unless those claims of immersive experiences go both ways. Eek.