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The game that makes Kinect worthwhile: 'Fru'
When Microsoft announced it would start selling the Xbox One without the motion-sensing Kinect peripheral in June 2014, Mattia Traverso and his team at Through Games were shocked. They were in the middle of developing a Kinect-exclusive title, Fru, a platformer that used players' silhouettes to uncover hidden ledges and outlets in a Mario-inspired world. The Kinect wasn't off to a roaring start to begin with, but Through Games was down to take a gamble on an innovative idea. Besides, during the first few months of Fru's development, the Kinect was guaranteed to be sold with every new Xbox One. And then, suddenly, that potential was slashed. "I'd be lying if I said the status of Kinect didn't affect us," Traverso tells me. "The surprise of the unbundling did hit our morale during production, and we had some doubts and worries about whether we would be financially viable at the end."
