Microsoft’s mysterious Leap Experience Pioneers’ (LXP) homepage is finally reported to be live. Unfortunately, it is also down. LXP is a team inside Microsoft, that has recently been given their own identity. You can read our article about the trademark Microsoft filed here.
“Here at LXP, we create far future experiences, for inventive hardware. We are part of Microsoft Studios and are looking for the most talented and most creative people in the world,” the LXP website states.
LXP is thought to be a Kinect based game studio, originally an internal team called LEAP. They were instrumental in creating the Kinect, and developing games for it. If that is true, this could be Microsoft’s backup now that they do not bundle Kinect with Xbox One.
The point of selling the Kinect with every Xbox One was to make sure that developers knew that everyone had one, and would use it to its full capabilities. Now, however, there is a chance that developers ignore the Kinect if they see that not enough of their customers even have one.This is a problem because if there is no games using Kinect, no one will want to buy one, and if no one buys one, then no one games incorporate it. The classic egg and chicken problem.
With LXP, Microsoft can solve that by developing for it themselves, regardless of how many people use it. This will give it value, making people buy it, and making it hard for other developers to ignore the Kinect.
This is one theory of the role of LXP. We will find the truth soon enough, when their page goes live, and will update you as it happens.
