Kinect 1st Impressions
I think the Kinect is a terrific technology, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone, I was a huge Eye Toy for PS2 advocate and motion gaming has always loomed large in my career. Back then I called the Eye Toy “the Nintendo product Nintendo didn’t make.” The Wii proved Nintendo had ideas like this but now, I think, their thunder is stolen. Microsoft owns the “movement” genre and that might be bad news for Sony and Nintendo. I haven’t tried the PlayStation Move, so I might be off base, but what I see in Move is Wii 2. Wii 1 was great, but the motion controls never really felt vital outside of the major showcases like Wii Sports. Kinect, requiring no controller, isn’t limited to doing things the Wii way. That could be crucial moving forward.
All that said, the Kinect isn’t all that impressive once you move away from Dance Central and one of the work out games. Kinectimals is adorable – I’ve always wondered why Nintendogs never got the Wii-treatment – and Kinect Adventures has a lot to like about it. But right now, it’s hard to see if Kinect can offer anything new for action/sports fans. Some games require controllers, it’s not surprising that the ones that work best are the games that focus on movement as a controller, rather than a gimmick.
My wife likes Yourself Fitness and Dance Central, the kids like Dance Central and Kinectimals, I like Dance Central – and those are the games where you’d never miss the lack of a controller. Will companies step up and really innovate with Kinect? I think not. It’s not safe. It’s too risky to innovate. Expect lots of Xbox 360 games with limited or questionable Kinect value. That said, anyone who does find a way to bring hardcore gaming to the Kinect – well, lets just say, that could change everything and anyone who does it right gets a stake in gaming’s future.
Kinect feels a lot like the day the Wii debuted. So much buzz and excitement over a few innovative and unique games, so much hope for the future… we’ll see what happens.
March 11th, 2011 at 3:34 pm
I’ve got Move controllers and Wii 2 is not that far off… the use of the camera allows a bit better depth perception of events (for instance, your distance from screen – moving in and out – is key to doing well at Ping Pong…) than the Wii, but it feels very Wii-ish overall…
I don’t have kinect but we’ll see if more comes down the pike I might have to try it out…
March 11th, 2011 at 5:19 pm
Kinect is really cool, but you have to have your game console in a freaking ballroom in order for it to work well. If you live in a house with small rooms like mine, you really can’t use it.
But don’t get me wrong, I still think it’s pretty impressive.technology with a lot of potential.
March 12th, 2011 at 6:54 am
I love the Kinect. The dancing is so fun and best of all, our 10 year old really likes it and she is hard to please!
March 12th, 2011 at 1:26 pm
Odd Cary, we’ve got about 15′ in front of the TV and about 8′ width and it seems like the sweet spot. I get that your space may be smaller, but a ball room is a bit of an exaggeration. 😉
Matt, Wii2 hasn’t been announced yet… right? your boys might like Kinectimals and Adventure but that’s not enough to make it worth the purchase. Fitness and Dance Central-have I mentioned Dance Central?- are killer apps.
Out of curiosity, what made you get the Move? I went Kinect because of some Dance game.
March 15th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Sold my KInect. Been there, done that on the Wii. This feels like the copycat movie that always comes out after a big new original hit movie. And is never as good as the original. Felt rather meh actually. Kinect Adventures? Felt junky like a typical licensed game.
Kinect tech feels like a mixture of Eye Toy and Wii.l. The tech is impressive at first sight, but has the same lack of responsiveness and accuracy limitations that EyeToy and Wii had. Also has same disconnect when you are reaching for spots in the bare 3d space.
It’s also not exactly nicely integrated into the 360 interface unlike the Wii at least..
I just wasn’t impressed enough. For me they had to show something slicker and more polished than the Wii to get me excited. Something new. The only thing new here is not holding a controller, but not seeing the benefits of that outweighing the negatives.
March 19th, 2011 at 3:50 pm
The work out is HARD! I can’t get away with it like I can with the Wii exercise workouts 🙂
March 24th, 2011 at 11:08 pm
It would be nice to play a first-person shooter on it, like Halo, but you’d need a treadmill that wen’t in 360 degrees to move, and a gun like the WII or like the playstation move KIllzone 3 controller. It be AWSOME