Kinectimals now available for iPhone and iPad

By Tom Warren, on 13th Dec 11 3:58 pm with 53 Comments

Kinectimals on iPhone

Microsoft announced the availability of its popular Kinectimals game for iPhone and iPad on Tuesday.

The Kinectimals game allows players to interact with virtual animals and stems from Microsoft’s popular Xbox 360 Kinect version. Microsoft has also ported the game to Windows Phone 7. The game is aimed primarily at younger audiences and features a set of virtual cubs that game players can interact with. Microsoft has released a number of iOS applications recently, including an Xbox LIVE app.

The game is available for $2.99 at Apple’s App Store for iOS.

  • http://techin5.com Jubbin Grewal @Techin5.com

    What the heck Micrsoft? The Xbox Live App for iOS devices was one thing (that was to let people see how good the Metro UI was).. but actually starting to port games over to iOS is just dumb. Why don’t we port Zune next then? (Oh god don’t actually do that!)

    • Anonymous

      It must be their new strategy:
      let’s make ourselves irrelevant.

    • http://twitter.com/hammeredpizza Louis Sandiford

      There’s a difference between making a bit of money in the short term, and losing out on vast amounts of potential customers in the long term.

      Xbox Live integration (with exclusives) was a main weapon in the Microsoft armory. Now it’s not. Whoever made this decision must be held to accountability.

      Ballmer out.

    • Emi Cyberschreiber

      and you have to spam the same message?

      its not halo for wp7, its a stupid game that none cared about because it was stupid and crap. you even have to scan the stupid code its not like it will integrate wirelessly or something.

      do you at least have Xbox and kinect AND Kinectimals? and then, also this app on your WP7 (if you have one)? if not why bother complaining about something most people dont have.

    • Anonymous

      well not to mention, any money they make, 30% goes to apple. seriously doubt MSFT can even pay their current electric bills as a mere appstore publisher. talk about epic downsizes. They should instead apply some of the apple logic to their strategy: offer unique software and tell users of other platforms that they bought the wrong device. exactly what the i-suite in the apple ecosystem is and why it will never be on windows or anything non apple no matter how much it would sell.

    • Guest

      Ballmer has been hard at work on that for 11 years now. Did you just notice?

    • Anonymous

      ballmer drove MSFT to record profits and won the desktop OS war. not sure what you mean. I’m talking about the decision to make their exclusive titles a tool to sell more ipads.

    • Guest

      @neonspark:disqus 

      Gates won the desktop OS war. Ballmer just maximized profits off yesterday’s successes while failing at everything important for the future.

    • Anonymous

      Porting Zune would be great actually, at least the Zune Pass.  Microsoft is being a software company, is this a bad thing?  I don’t see how they can become irrelevant…they have some seriously epic software. Putting it on everyone’s device only increases their relevance.

    • Prashant

       I would love to see One note on Mac OSX.

    • Guest

      Boot Windows like many other Mac users or just use the web version.

    • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

      A notes app? There are a bunch on the Mac App Store 
      Eg. http://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/quick-note/id414848186?mt=12

    • J A

      They could have been creating more apps for their own platform, instead they are doing just that for the competitor. Not that Apple poses a hint of threat in gaming or collaboration so I don’t get why they are doing this.

    • Guest

      “Not that Apple poses a hint of threat in gaming”

      Huh? Have you looked at the App Store recently? The primary apps on iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads are games. If you add up all the revenue and profit, Apple is likely making more than anyone from gaming and has more users. Also, the mobile gaming market is booming, whereas the console gaming market is mostly stagnant.

    • http://twitter.com/hammeredpizza Louis Sandiford

      There’s a difference between making a bit of money in the short term, and losing out on vast amounts of potential customers in the long term.

      Xbox Live integration (with exclusives) was a main weapon in the Microsoft armory. Now it’s not. Whoever made this decision must be held to accountability.

      Ballmer out.

    • Guest

      The future of Xbox is the service, not the console. What’s wrong with moving in that direction by expanding availability to more clients?

    • BadManDuke

      I think you started to get it with your second thought edit. MS is moving many of its products to a “Software as a Service” platform. We’re seeing this Office already. They are porting Lync to Android for instance, which landed Motorola Solutions (where I work) as a client for Office 365 (beginning in Jan). A major barrier to that was that they mostly use Android phones (a holdover from their split with Motorola Mobility), which they fixed by porting some of their apps. In return they landed a giant client.

    • Impartial

      It’s part of the PR machine, they need to show cool stuff to other people, besides kinectimals might make them sell more Xboxes and keep the ball rolling. People will say hey MS did this? Its really cool, mmmmmmmmmmmm it’s not 1990 any more?

    • bricktown

      Nobody is getting a Windows Phone because of Kinectimals. But if you can get people on iOS to use enough of your services and play your games; suddenly when they’re looking for a new phone and all their favorite apps and games are available it makes WP looks like a real option to them.

  • Anonymous

    Microsoft switching to iOS or wut :D Hhahaa no I support their recent product launches on different platforms. Shows they’re not only focused on their own software, but also care about costumers that are carrying competitor’s products.

    • Anonymous

      they couldn’t care less about the said customers you speak of, but they would like to sell one last few copies of an otherwise failed title to recoup investment.

    • Guest

      FO troll.

    • Anonymous

      oh you actually thought that game was good. I see :)

    • Guest

      @neonspark:disqus 

      No, just sick of your whiny negative crap.

  • http://twitter.com/karlcramer Karl Cramer

    It was one thing to release Xbox LIVE and Halo Waypoint. Technically all those things could be accessed from any phone’s web browser so no big deal if they were released as apps. But this is different, a Windows Phone exclusive game produced by Microsoft Studios.

    Isn’t enough that iPhone and Android have games Windows Phone doesn’t? Does Microsoft have to release the few exclusives its platform had?

    • http://twitter.com/karlcramer Karl Cramer

      This is beginning to make me think that Microsoft is going to abandon the Windows Phone platform.

    • bricktown

      Games don’t have a very long shelf life. WP does not nearly have the market penetration at the moment for Kinectimals to make any buzz on its own, and there’s no value down the road in having a 9 month old “exclusive” game. So what exactly is the value in maintaining an exclusive that nobody even known about? 

    • http://twitter.com/karlcramer Karl Cramer

      Because Nintendo doesn’t release old games on other systems. You know when you saw Sonic start appearing on other systems? When Sega got out of the console business

  • Emi Cyberschreiber

    people will complain about this in 3, 2, 1….

    i just have seen someone playing Kinectimals and he has a kid. its an ok with kinect but on WP7 is boring and not fun, so they can put it on any platform they want because it wont change how boring this game is in a phone. they can remove it from marketplace and honestly i wouldn’t care, in fact, it would be better since its more crap to WP7 marketplace

    i guess until i cant control a kinect game with my phone ( like they showed ), or multiplayer. any kinect/xbox  wp7 is stupid and irrelevant.
    and i dont think Dance Central 2 will be any better… sad part about Xbox live titles. most are not any better than a non-Xbox live title.

  • Alvaro-garcia

    Microsoft is not protecting its ecosystem lately. Maybe is a new strategy where each product must be success no matter if you need to support rivals. For instance Expression web sp2 has lot of mentions to php but no mention to .net. They lunch producto to ipad/iphone before wp7. Wp7 is named third in Hotmail login screen.

  • Anonymous

    even MS digs iOS .. what are we doing here? where is the Photosyn.. app?

  • Ship

    Curious, does this have achievements, or was that section just entirely removed from the game?

  • http://netnate.net Matthieu Nate

    I do think porting Xbox Live was good (as long as it doesn’t perform as the Xbox Companion) but I strongly believe they should build up on games exclusives, especially for this game which is a companion app for the Xbox 360 game.
    On the other hand, I understand that it might be success and be profitable on iOS while selling more Xboxes but taking a selling point from Windows Phone seems odd.
    At least, they could have featured all of the iOS apps they made for iOS in Windows Phone! Photosynth remains an iOS exclusive, and OneNote is arguably better on iPhone than Windows Phone.

  • http://twitter.com/hammeredpizza Louis Sandiford

    The death of WP7.

    Talk about selling your soul to the devil – I’m thinking of doing the same unless Microsoft stops self-sabotaging their own OS.

    • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

      Microsoft has a soul?

    • Neo

      Microsoft is the best software producer in the world.

      Do you think Apple has a soul? If you do think so, something is really wrong with you. Companies want to earn money, that’s how the world works.

  • Guest

    “If you’ve already experienced Kinectimals on Kinect for Xbox 360, your phone becomes the key to unlocking five new cubs on your console”

  • Kieran Kelly

    The worst thing though is that it is cheaper than the Windows phone version

    • Emi Cyberschreiber

      ehmm it costs the same….

    • Kieran Kelly

      No £2 on app store £2.30 on Marketplace

    • Emi Cyberschreiber

      well in US marketplace. its $2.99.

      but obviously we are from different marketplaces. so too bad if its so expensive for you… i guess.

    • Neo

      Does it really matter?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_3OIDXOI5OEMTX6Z3O5YUBFSISA Diego3336

    Next step is a Metro UI launcher for Android…

  • Bburke33609

    Gees. Talk about overreactions. MS is a software company. They make a great OS for phones. Xbox live is not that big a selling point in and of itself. The games are, but how many people are really buying phones for games? How many are buying windows phones for gaming?

    MS has to beat the perception that they are lame and do everything they can to block the competition from trying to compete. I like the fact that they are doing all of this work with iOS and I wish they would put more resources to porting photosynth and all of the other software to WP7 but if they are making moves like this that helps change perceptions then it is the right move.

  • http://www.jitutechnology.com/ Technology

    Really nice game, I love to play this game.

  • http://twitter.com/laserfloyd Lewis McCrary

    Think of it as MS saying they’re aren’t as “closed” as Apple is.  Just as long as the WP7 crowd has a distinct advantage.  You know something like “the iOS version is good but if you had WP7 you could do so much more…”  Come over to the dark side.  We have cookies!

    • http://twitter.com/21tigermike Michael A. Robson

      Like how you put quotes around the word ‘closed’ cuz you’re not really sure what you mean by that. Give it some thought.

  • Anonymous

    Quick q, how is Xbox live on WP7 different from Xbox live on ios?

    • Neo

      Google it, like everyone else :)

  • Jeanp Belmondo

    think of it as viral marketing – MS can promote Kinect for free on the iphone (well, they even earn some money)

  • Kateisorge

    I have the cute app.how do I earn money.

  • Iamsam_arg

    I am just wonering, reading all the posts about how bad a move this is from Microsoft, just how many Xbox uses bought an Xbox because Kinectimals was the killer app? It’s a very niche app, if it were Halo I might raise an eyebrow.

  • http://sellaniphone.com/ sell my iphone

    Thanks for posting!