Xbox 360 Kinect, the future of gaming, the saviour of the Nation and as luck would have it a cure for the common pot belly, sounds amazing!! It is amazing…..for a little while. In much the same way as my original wide grinned enthusiasm for the Nintendo Wii had morphed into my bored clock watching ‘can we do something else now?‘ face within two hours, Kinect did much the same. I should have seen it coming, a true de-ja-vu moment. Two hours into Kinect Adventures and it had transpired that the future of gaming was all about jumping and dancing for twenty minutes before collapsing into a sweating heap on the sofa to do a great asthmatic Darth Vader impression.
Now i’m sure Kinect games will become something more solid than the current crop of, let’s face it, party games we’ve been offered thus far, but even when that happens i’m not sure i’ll be convinced.
As a father to five awesome nippers 90% of my gaming is done between 10pm and whatever time in the morning I crawl into bed. For a few hours i’m immersed. I’m Commander Shepherd answering a call from a distress beacon on some distant moon or Marcus Fenix taking the battle to the Locust Hordes or maybe i’ll have the pedal to metal as I fight for pole position and all the while my children are sleeping soundly in their beds…..now imagine me trying to do this while playing Kinect. Leaping and crashing my way through level 1, dodging to the left, ducking to the right, punching, kicking, sweat flying, drinks toppling, wife shouting, kids awake, Kinect off, bed….
And that’s why I hope Kinect remains a luxury, dusted off and brought out when friends and family pop round, turning up at Christmas for a couple of hours between dinner and the Queens speech and making hundreds of clowns redundant as the nations new kids Birthday party entertainer, rather than the must have future of gaming Microsoft are aiming for.
Dear Kinect,
It’s not you…..it’s me.
I’m old school, I like buttons, I like pulling the right trigger to fire, I like pressing A to jump and clicking the left stick to sprint, I like the feel of a controller in my hands, it’s solid, it’s real and I love doing this from the comfort of my well used armchair, coffee sat near and a biccy or two for dunking.
All the best for the future (I just hope it doesn’t involve Call of Duty or Gears of War 3)
Base.
The future of gaming, please no!!
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Bring out the actual Kinect games already. All these hacks using PCs - in the one case of RUSE where an actual title was made BC with it - are making it look like you wasted over a years worth of promotion...on promotion. That is to say you were so focused on style you forgot about any substance.
Sincerely, Some one who isn't actually going to buy Kinect, but would rather not see such a massive waste of creative effort and resources.
Kinect is really not the future of gaming. If you REALLY sit and think long enough about the benefits it provides (or doesn't) to the gameplay, it's clear.
I've never said Kinect isn't a fun distraction, but that is all it really is. A way for Microsoft to gain more marketshare whilst the rest of the Xbox audience "suffers" for it. I've heard people say that Gears and Forza along with multiplats is enough, and on a personal level that's fine, but imagine what Microsoft COULD be bringing to the table if they weren't so adamantly focussed on Kinect! But hey, that's the way of the industry I suppose. They've gotta try and cover all the bases.
All the people claiming that Kinect is going to change the way we play games in the future, should just stop. Does Kinect really bring any long-term benefits to games that are considered to be "core"?
I agree with the author, gaming at home is almost the same. Children at bed, TV without volume and couch gaming for a few hours until eyes are closing without my intervention.