Kinect: Hit or Miss?

Been arguing about this for awhile. I feel that Kinect is a useless add on, trying to justify R&D for the next Xbox, and that Microsoft will never give 3rd party developers full access to the information needed to program for it, so that Microsoft can develop the best games. Standard Big N stuff. We've seen it all before.

However, I have been countered with the argument that Microsoft put $800 million into a slush fund for the project, and know that it is a 10 year program.

My counter is that only a percentage of Xbox users will have Kinect, and then obviously not all of them are going to have all of the games, so our market share is incredibly tiny compared to downloadable games.

I think Christmas will tell. Thoughts?

I took a step backwards when I got sick of my PS2, so I may not be the best person to answer this, but I'm leaning towards it being more of a "Band Wagon" type thing. I think that Nintendo will dominate this field for a while, and any other companies will play second fiddle.

I do reckon that it's quite possibly the future of the industry though, because Nintendo have done an ace job of making new groups of traditionally game hating people love games. Mainly because they're more simple, and fun if you like that sort of thing.

I wouldn't get Kinect if I had an X Box, if I wanted games where I waggled my arms, I'd be more inclined to get a Wii because its shelf life will probably be longer and give better value.

It sounds like you've answered your own question already, by leaning towards the "cheap add on" side of things; I would advise waiting to see if it catches on, then if it bombs (a la 32X) pick it up cheap and keep it as a funky little add on for your collection.

Just my thoughts, but then I'm more of a traditionalist who thinks that the only workout you should get when playing video games is thumb strengthening!

imo, the only way it can really take on is:

1. if they bundle it for every Xbox 360 being sold out there right now, without the added expense.

2. if they gave every single pre-kinect, Xbox 360 owner a FREE kinect.


Otherwise, it's just going to be yet another Eye Toy or...[think of any innovative peripheral ever made without being part of the console itself].


in other words. As long as it is not part of the console itself, the peripheral will remain just that, a peripheral. Then take into account all the games it will NOT play, and you've got yourself a useless Activator.

I disagree. I'm not going to buy Kinect at launch because my living room is one foot too short for 2-player games. But Microsoft is spending $500 million marketing this peripheral and, unlike the 32X, they aren't going to launch a new console in six months.

I don't think Kinect will bomb for these reasons. It will probably be much more successful than eye toy or Move. I am going to be watching the Kinect fighting games very closely. If somebody lets me fight damn dirty ninjas, and I really mean fight them, I'll buy whatever it takes. ;)

Once Kinect got the Oprah seal of approval, it was over.....If Oprah can make KFC run out of chicken, she can help MS sell kinects. Those mindless oprah drones would jump off a cliff if she told them to.

Anyways, I have a MOVE and a Kinect. My wife and kids enjoy both of them and thats primarily why i bought them. They are both fun and I have had fun playing them.

I actually feel like the move is the better system for gaming but the only thing that concerns me about move is Sony. They dont have the greatest track record for supporting add on hardware. Look at the eyetoy and the psp go....

Kinect will need some type of control device to play games that arent on rails or arent simple casual games. MS is pouring a buttload of money into it and that alone tells me they will do everything they can to support it. I dont really get that feeling from Sony for the move.

Well my kid really wants the Kinect for christmas, so I have to go find it. And I'm gonna get him the Sonic Free Riders games.
Which look pretty decent. He LOVES all Sonic games. Even the ones we think suck. He's 12.
But I do like the he enjoys the older Sonics just as much as the newer ones.
At least this will get him off the couch!!!

I think it's pointless, and I feel the same about Move.

This is a case of catch-up on the part of Sony and Microsoft. This them saying "Oh man, how is it that the system with the least powerful hardware is kicking our asses? It must be the gimmick that powers the system! Let's copy that."

It's an add on. Is it worth spending almost as much as I would for a Wii for an add on? When the launch games are so lackluster? I could just buy the Wii, for a little more money, which already has a full library of games that have received much acclaim. HD graphics are all that this adds to the experience. Oh, and your game room had better be big enough!

How much can really be done without a controller?

And then, what if I don't already own a 360? The cost is prohibitive. I agree with whoever said it - they can dress it up however they want, it's still a peripheral.

I'm not advocating Kinect, I doubt it will ever have a game that compels me to buy it. We should consider though, that the Wii was essentially a Gamecube relaunch in a different package with the Wiimote packaged inside for cheap. We are at the point where a new generation of consoles would normally be launching, but the graphics arms race has basically stopped. Value propositions are the order of the day.

So, lets break the costs down from scratch for late adopters who want a motion control system. I'll just use Amazon.com's prices.

Wii Fit Bundle
Includes four Wiimotes, four nunchucks, Wii fit w/ the board, We Ski, and Wii Sports for:
$500

Or here's a two player bundle for $400

Neither package comes with Wii motion plus attachments.

Meanwhile the most expensive Kinect Bundle is $400. Add $100 to get three games with the package, or two games and an extra 360 controller.

Keep in mind that Kinect allows two player with a large enough living room and no coffee tables.

The cheapest Move package only comes with one magic wand, no nunchuck, and one game. It's already $400, and buying a 160GB PS3 instead doesn't seem cheaper. I can't find Move outside of a bundle, but the nunchuk is $40 and we know how much extra games are. I am supposing that Move allows for fitness games without an extra peripheral like the Wii Fit Board.

So, the value proposition is virtually identical with no consideration for any of the other functions of the systems or their libraries. Though Move looks slightly more expensive to get to two players, especially with two nunchuks, and more than one game.

If/when they start pushing this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw


It could be FAR more significant and useful, albeit also a bit overkill for that purpose. (other than avoiding the need to have any sort of accessories worn)

Head tracking has some truly awesome potential though.

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We are at the point where a new generation of consoles would normally be launching, but the graphics arms race has basically stopped. Value propositions are the order of the day.

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Don't you think it's more accurate that we're at a point where successful attempts at innovation are being rewarded rather than focusing on whatever has the most bells and whistles? There were times when that wasn't the case, when things straying from the normal approach were "weird." I feel that may have gotten that way around the mid - 90s, but I'm just pulling that part out of my butt.

Again, Wii has outsold the efforts of the competition significantly this generation. Kinect and Move are late attempts to rectify the less visionary approach taken by their respective companies.

Kinect's controllerless approach makes it more impractical. There are simply some things you can't do with gestures and body movement. There's a point where you need something to manipulate for the games that are popular and that people want to play... which will mean more money for more peripherals. Sure, XBox has a wireless controller as it is, but not one that you can hold in one hand for a practical control - and if you held it with both hands, you're now in an unnatural arm position.

Move may have more "correct" in that way, but I'm unconvinced by it anyway. I sometimes question how successful PS3 would be if it wasn't also one of the best blu-ray players on the market.

I look at it like touch-screen phones. Apple came out with the iPhone and suddenly you had a flood of largish phones with touchscreens... but all those phones did was replace the keypad on a regular phone; there's no point. The point of the iPhone (and now Android too) is the intuitive interface and the functionality of it, not the fact that it has a touch screen. Wii isn't successful because it has a gimmick, it's successful because it's so well implemented and so functional. Kinect and Move (especially with a host of mediocre launch games) have a long way to go before they shed gimmick status.

Ultimately, if Sony and Microsoft's ad campaigns are any indication, they're going to invest significantly in the success of their motion systems. Meanwhile, Nintendo will have an opportunity to get a leg up on their next gen console, trump the other two, and carve out their niche while Sony and MS are treading water on yesterday's news. If it doesn't end up going that way and Sony and MS go to their next gen leaving these peripherals behind, it's 32x land for both of them - and that'll hurt both companies as well.

I think Nintendo is absolutely responsible for the current marketing positioning from Sony and Microsoft. I think the economy is the biggest cause of the graphics arms race halt though.

In regard to Kinect not having any controls, that is easily fixed by peripherals in the same way the Wii has made accepted.

I like Kinect, as a proof of concept for Microsoft it's a really great pice of work, and all credit to them, but I can forsee some issues.

For a start you have to stand to use it, I have no problem with that as I have a good size open plan living room, not so good for folks who have their Xbox in a small bedroom.
This isnt really a limitation on the Wii as most things can be played sitting down, or in my case laying on a beanbag on the floor.

Also (and I can't confirm this myself) but supposedly it has real issues where more than two people are involved, very tall people are involved or rather large people like myself ;) are involved.
If anyone can cornfirm, deny or elaborate on that I'd like to hear more...

Personally it's a lot of money for a peripheral I'm pretty unlikely to do anything with, I can see the novelty wearing off extremely quickly indeed.

I think the question has some spelling errors; it should be "Shit or Piss". :D

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Originally Posted by sheath

I think Nintendo is absolutely responsible for the current marketing positioning from Sony and Microsoft. I think the economy is the biggest cause of the graphics arms race halt though.

In regard to Kinect not having any controls, that is easily fixed by peripherals in the same way the Wii has made accepted.

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Yeah but the control issue... that's only one small part of it. This is too little, too late. None of the consols in this gen have been failures by any stretch, but Sony and MS were totally outclassed by the uniqueness of the Wii and they know it.

I'm hoping this leads down the road to one of them stopping... then maybe Sega can come back! Hehe...

Well I just pickup the Kinect today, for my kid for christmas... I'll see if I can't carefully open it up and mess around with it this weekend and give you guys a review!

I see this new motion stuff being like 3D back in the 90's. It's probably going to be successful just for being different (as well as fun at times), and people who like controllers will largely go ignored, except for a few developers and hand-held devices (like the people who liked 2d stuff). On the upside, PC game developers have a chance to grab a whole market away from the consoles, but they'll probably just durp instead.

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Originally Posted by mick_aka

Also (and I can't confirm this myself) but supposedly it has real issues where more than two people are involved, very tall people are involved or rather large people like myself ;) are involved.
If anyone can cornfirm, deny or elaborate on that I'd like to hear more...

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I can confirm that Kinect goes in the shitter when 2 people are involved. I played kinect sports last night and it was absolutely fantastic by myself. My moves were all registered and I actually woke up sore this morning. It was fantastic exercise.

However, once my stepson joined in, it all went to shit. He is just a tiny bit shorter than me and kinect had a lot of problems tracking both of us and it kept pausing the game telling me to recalibrate. It happened so frequently that it really defeated the purpose of even trying 2 player games....

PS move, on the other hand, has shown no issues when playing 2 player games....

My wife wants a Kinect, what is this world coming to? It kinda sucks to think that I'm no longer gaming's target audience.

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Originally Posted by GohanX

My wife wants a Kinect, what is this world coming to? It kinda sucks to think that I'm no longer gaming's target audience.

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Welcome to your thirties! We're your fall into the demographic of nothingness!

Let's all pray it doesn't come to this in 5 years.

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Originally Posted by Why-Disciple

Let's all pray it doesn't come to this in 5 years.

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That's too funny! It's basically true isn't it!!!

That's one more thing BTTF got right about the future!

14 things from BTTF 2 that actually came true, and 5 that didn't

Well, you guys seem a bit close minded here. But apparantly its easier for kids with autism and stuff of that nature to play kinect because they don't have to remember button commands, just for that I see it as an automatic hit.

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Originally Posted by sheath

I think Nintendo is absolutely responsible for the current marketing positioning from Sony and Microsoft. I think the economy is the biggest cause of the graphics arms race halt though.

In regard to Kinect not having any controls, that is easily fixed by peripherals in the same way the Wii has made accepted.

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Single player game (local or multiplayer online) + Head tracking + standard controller = WIN! :D

As for the Wii, remember that it offers standard controllers from the start with many games assuming the use of the nunchuck (or allowing stripped down control without it) and many of the better/more well thought out games support the conventional GC controller as well and some with the classic controller. (it sucks when the CC is supported but not GC especially since Nintendo has full manufacturing rights back for the GC pad, but it's better than being stuck with only wii controls I suppose -quite a few games do use the wii controls well and some manage roughly equal control with GC/CC/Wii+chuck)

The Kinect however is pushing more or less the same thing as the Activator or Eye Toy with better technology... sure you can have some of those hands-free gimmicky games work, but there's tons of stuff where normal controller or peripherals are preferable by far.

And again, I think the head tracking thing has some massive potential. (again, limited to single player/online multiplayer unless there was some way to differentiate users -in the case of an IR based mechanism, perhaps switchable wavelengths within the IR spectrum to allow split-screen play -I don't think the Wii supports that as-is though and why should it since the "sensor" bar outputs a common IR beam to all controllers and there's no need for precise calibration -hence why warm light bulbs and candles or sunlight can throw things off and generic IR LEDs work fine)




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

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Originally Posted by old man

I see this new motion stuff being like 3D back in the 90's. It's probably going to be successful just for being different (as well as fun at times), and people who like controllers will largely go ignored, except for a few developers and hand-held devices (like the people who liked 2d stuff). On the upside, PC game developers have a chance to grab a whole market away from the consoles, but they'll probably just durp instead.

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This is exactly what I see happening. If motion controls and casual social games on websites don't take over in the next five years I will be surprised.

My GF likes the 'Dance' type games and wishes she could play them without being tied to the controllers (like she is with the Wii), so I might be looking at getting the one for the P3. Oh joy :| ;)

Honestly, besides those specific dance games (for my GF only), I don't see any reason to have this kind of functionality past having a Wii because the Wii handles it just fine imo and is well suited for that task already.

I would rather use a standard controller 9/10... which is why my Wii collection is limited. There are some games I decided would be interesting with the unique Wii controls (but again, I decided on a system and not just a controller addon because it was custom tailored for this aim), Call of Duty 3 for instance... I have enough for the PC/P3/P2/etc so I thought it'd be neat to have that 'special' gameplay for COD 3.


My point is that there is already a system that has built upon this concept, and well enough I might add that I don't think the current situation warrants Sony and Microgay coming to the fray with their copycat versions. My verdict is that those 2 big bastards are simply trying to cash in on a sure money maker (I'm sure this will appeal to those who wanted this type of functionality but didn't want to support Nintendo).

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Originally Posted by mrbigreddog

That's too funny! It's basically true isn't it!!!

That's one more thing BTTF got right about the future!

14 things from BTTF 2 that actually came true, and 5 that didn't

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Dude, don't get me on about the lack of flying cars. I mean really, people will die. :mad:

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Originally Posted by sheath

I'm not advocating Kinect, I doubt it will ever have a game that compels me to buy it. We should consider though, that the Wii was essentially a Gamecube relaunch in a different package with the Wiimote packaged inside for cheap. We are at the point where a new generation of consoles would normally be launching, but the graphics arms race has basically stopped. Value propositions are the order of the day.

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It's development costs that are keeping technology at a standstill as well. The Wii is an affordable technolgy for everyone, as was the Gameboy. Neither system was all that advanced, but the costs to develop games and for the consumers to purchase them has been a huge plus for those systems. The Kinect and Move won't have those benefits, especially on the consumer side.

The PC side is a bigger mess, when you have an arms race between Intel and AMD over CPUs. And on the videocard side you have ATI and NVidia trying to trump eachother every 3-6 months. It was much simpler when you had a Pentium 3 vs. AMD Athlon, and the GeForce 4 vs. Radeon 9xxx. The game developers are nowhere close to harnessing the power of the Quad-core processors that came out over 2 years ago, let alone taking advantage of the power provided by an i7.

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Originally Posted by JackieBogard

Well, you guys seem a bit close minded here. But apparantly its easier for kids with autism and stuff of that nature to play kinect because they don't have to remember button commands, just for that I see it as an automatic hit.

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I don't think its about being close-minded at all. It's about recognizing that another system has already done the same thing, that the weakest system in terms of graphics and processing power this generation has destroyed the competition. Would it be easier for those folks? Sure, for certain games.

Again, Nintendo will take advantage of the wasted effort from these offerings to put out the next thing that will outsell Sony and MS's system. They'll beat them to the next generation and have a foothold before the others are even oriented.

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Originally Posted by runback22

I actually feel like the move is the better system for gaming but the only thing that concerns me about move is Sony. They dont have the greatest track record for supporting add on hardware. Look at the eyetoy and the psp go....

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The Eyetoy was hardly a Flop It might of been in America but was not in Europe over 10 Titles was made for it with the last two begin made in 2008. The same thing happened with the Buzz Buzzers and Singstar in America.

Though the Ps3 Camera was a dumb idea its Launch game Eye of Judgement was a joke by day one everyone knew you could easily trick it to think you have trading cards you do not I think the online Severs for the game no longer exist too. Though the game did get a PSP version that needed no camera to play later on.

Although sony Delayed the only other PS3 eye game Eyepet months after Europe got it and their other agumented reality game that used a camera Invisimals on Psp got brought out in America almost 11 months after Europe got it. No idea what was with these delays though Invisimals even has the Asian and American server listings in the European version:daze:.

The PSPGO no matter what price it was gonna be would bomb hard because the PSN store is a joke compared to XBOX LIVE. The lack of Demos for most games and the fact every region has tons of diffrent games no other region has and their terrible delays for games in other regions eg Castle Crashers where Europe gets it weeks after america when its a port of a 2+ year old game is pathetic when the game was out on 360 eveywhere on the sameday.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It's development costs that are keeping technology at a standstill as well. The Wii is an affordable technolgy for everyone, as was the Gameboy. Neither system was all that advanced, but the costs to develop games and for the consumers to purchase them has been a huge plus for those systems. The Kinect and Move won't have those benefits, especially on the consumer side.

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The Game Boy was a very different case as a handheld where not only cost was a factor but other major factors came into play meaning that a simpler (or rather more cut down) design was indeed "better" for the mass market even if it wasn't for the price point.
The smaller size was significant, but the main issue was the battery life being 4-6x the battery life of the competition while 2/3 the batteries.
Color LCD screens had poorer contrast and viewing angles than mono/grayscale screens making reflective backed color screens generally impractical until the mid 90s (or extremely boarderline and making the large palettes of the Lynx and GG worthless -might as well have used 6-bit RGB if that), so Nintendo not only saved cost by using the mono/scale screen, but it allowed them to have an acceptably usable non-backlit screen and thus cutting a massive power drain out of the system.

Nintendo's market position was also a major tie-in with the GB's success. But keeping that and the price point and form factor, if the GB had a similar battery life as the competition, it wouldn't have been nearly as strong.

The Wii is a different case in general than that and has more to do with pushing into untapped/ignored market sectors on top of the lower price point. (albeit in a technical sense, quite possibly the most overpriced mass market game console ever produced)

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The PC side is a bigger mess, when you have an arms race between Intel and AMD over CPUs. And on the videocard side you have ATI and NVidia trying to trump eachother every 3-6 months. It was much simpler when you had a Pentium 3 vs. AMD Athlon, and the GeForce 4 vs. Radeon 9xxx. The game developers are nowhere close to harnessing the power of the Quad-core processors that came out over 2 years ago, let alone taking advantage of the power provided by an i7.

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Not to mention all the bottlenecks related to multi-core processors even compared to discrete multiprocessor systems. (much more issues with I/O bound bottlenecks, etc, etc) Multi-core CPUs are great for computationally intensive stuff, less competitive for bandwidth intensive stuff, and more extreme as you add more cores.
Of course, processor technology hit a wall (more or less) with increasing clock speeds, so that limited advancement in single-core designs. (you still have other advancements to performance on a per-clock basis, but up until ~5 years ago you saw that in combination with ever increasing clock speeds)

And with the advancement in GPUs, you have more and more push for that offloading CPU grunt as well.

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

The Game Boy was a very different case as a handheld where not only cost was a factor but other major factors came into play meaning that a simpler (or rather more cut down) design was indeed "better" for the mass market even if it wasn't for the price point.
The smaller size was significant, but the main issue was the battery life being 4-6x the battery life of the competition while 2/3 the batteries.
Color LCD screens had poorer contrast and viewing angles than mono/grayscale screens making reflective backed color screens generally impractical until the mid 90s (or extremely boarderline and making the large palettes of the Lynx and GG worthless -might as well have used 6-bit RGB if that), so Nintendo not only saved cost by using the mono/scale screen, but it allowed them to have an acceptably usable non-backlit screen and thus cutting a massive power drain out of the system.

Nintendo's market position was also a major tie-in with the GB's success. But keeping that and the price point and form factor, if the GB had a similar battery life as the competition, it wouldn't have been nearly as strong.

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From a consumer standpoint, the battery life was a major issue. The Atari Lynx required 6 AA batteries that only lasted 2 hours. I couldn't even use rechargeables, because they would get stuck inside the system. How many parents would go through buying their kids a large supply of batteries to power that thing.

I believe the fact that you could put a Gameboy in your back pocket and take it anywhere made it a much better handheld, over the Lynx, Nomad or Game Gear. The rest of the competition looked pretty fragile when put into abusive environments.

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The Wii is a different case in general than that and has more to do with pushing into untapped/ignored market sectors on top of the lower price point. (albeit in a technical sense, quite possibly the most overpriced mass market game console ever produced)

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Yeah, but Nintendo could quickly release games for the system, since it didn't require advanced graphics techniques, or added developer tools beyond the use of the motion controls. They didn't have problems getting large amounts of 3rd party support, since the investment to get a game out on the hardware was considerably less than that of a 360 or PS3 title.

There's no denying the selling point of the Wii was it's ease of use for people that didn't play videogames, but the price being half of that of the competitiion made it a much easier sell as well.

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Not to mention all the bottlenecks related to multi-core processors even compared to discrete multiprocessor systems. (much more issues with I/O bound bottlenecks, etc, etc) Multi-core CPUs are great for computationally intensive stuff, less competitive for bandwidth intensive stuff, and more extreme as you add more cores.
Of course, processor technology hit a wall (more or less) with increasing clock speeds, so that limited advancement in single-core designs. (you still have other advancements to performance on a per-clock basis, but up until ~5 years ago you saw that in combination with ever increasing clock speeds)

And with the advancement in GPUs, you have more and more push for that offloading CPU grunt as well.

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I read an article where the writer was seeing just how much CPU resources were being used for multiple games. He pretty much discovered that 2 cores took the brunt of the load and there was maybe 2 games that he tested that really used the other 2 cores of a quad-core processor. It's going to be a couple of years before we see PC games that require a quad-core to run. Mafia II might be the first, because it uses a crazy cloth physics engine, but a (2nd) physics support graphics card can take that load of the main GPU/CPU, if it's used for that purpose only.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

From a consumer standpoint, the battery life was a major issue. The Atari Lynx required 6 AA batteries that only lasted 2 hours. I couldn't even use rechargeables, because they would get stuck inside the system. How many parents would go through buying their kids a large supply of batteries to power that thing.

I believe the fact that you could put a Gameboy in your back pocket and take it anywhere made it a much better handheld, over the Lynx, Nomad or Game Gear. The rest of the competition looked pretty fragile when put into abusive environments.

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The original GB's 20+ hour battery life is still impressive by modern standards ;) that was one of the issues with the GBP (much shorter battery life, albeit still better than the competition) though the GBC imprived that somewhat... not sure about how the GBA compares. (it doesn't seem that any have matched the original brick/play it loud GBs in general battery life though)

But it's not like Atari could have even competed very well even with a favorable price point, form factor, and battery life given Nintendo's market presence. They'd likely have done a great deal better than they did, but that's not saying too much. (probably a stronger presence in regions they were more successful historically like the UK)
The GG OTOH probably could have offered much more real competition in that sense, but it's not like they still couldn't have changed that by ~94/95 when color LCD screens had gotten good enough (outside of super high-end) with contrast to allow reasonable reflective displays. (ie they could have released a GG Jr or such with no light and a higher quality but unlit screen, let alone a more consolidated chipset and smaller form factor to go along with that and the lack of a backlight, likely 4 batteries and a far more competitive battery life ... and Nintendo still wouldn't have a color handheld out for several years and the GBC was still deficient in a number of ways compared to the GG)
I'm not sure why Sega didn't push for that...

And I don't think you could fit it in your back pocket comfortably... plus that's kind of asking for it to get stolen. (as it would poke out considerably) Side/front pocket OTOH would be fine as long as you weren't a little kid. (a little tight, but a reasonable fit as long as nothing else was already filling your pocket)
The GBP would fit in a back pocket, but it would still make a lot more sense to use a front pocket IMO.

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There's no denying the selling point of the Wii was it's ease of use for people that didn't play videogames, but the price being half of that of the competitiion made it a much easier sell as well.

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That's a bit arguable, they didn't have to use motion controls for that: one issue was simply the daunting newer controllers with too many buttons. I think a pack-in controller that looked much simpler could have been significant as well, but the Wii Remote sort fo does both of those things. (and in many cases it's not just people who haven't ever played video games, but maybe not for several generations, sometimes not since the NES days, or back in the early 80s in the 2600's prime)

OTOH the motion controls can be a major turn off to even casual gamers (casual in the sense of playing less often, not in the "casual" market) who feel more comfortable with a "conventional" controller of some sort, even the pointer (while far more inovative than motion controls IMO) can be misused at times and there's very few games which don't merit support for the GC controller (and CC as well once it became available).
I will say it hasn't been as bad as the DS at least as while it's hurt some games, most of those have been sloppy ports or generally weaker games unlike some DS titles which were otherwise very good if not top tier but ruined by touch screen controls. (Star Fox Command is the first that comes to mind)

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I read an article where the writer was seeing just how much CPU resources were being used for multiple games. He pretty much discovered that 2 cores took the brunt of the load and there was maybe 2 games that he tested that really used the other 2 cores of a quad-core processor. It's going to be a couple of years before we see PC games that require a quad-core to run. Mafia II might be the first, because it uses a crazy cloth physics engine, but a (2nd) physics support graphics card can take that load of the main GPU/CPU, if it's used for that purpose only.

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And how long before graphics cards start adding a dedicated physics coprocessor alongside the primary GPU to displace the use of dual cards? ;)

Oprah's audience will go apeshit for anything they get for free and since most of them likely didn't even know what Kinect was at the time they were more pumped that their kids are getting an Xbox 360 for free.

Pretty much.

Kinect WILL win over the more casual crowd who will be enamored by the technology. Those middle class white families you see in all the commercials? That is who will be, and is, buying the Kinect.

I don't think hardcore gamers will have much interest in the device other than for the fact that, well, it's a new device. New shiny tech might encourage people to pick it up to see what the fuss is about, but Microsoft will really have to get their game together on software if they want to convince the majority of gamers to buy into it.

That being said, cornering the casual market proved surprisingly successful, and thanks to Nintendo, the industry has changed. Video games in general are no longer stuff for the kids, or for the older recluse with no life. Games have now been integrated in all forms of entertainment, and across a variety of different devices not even intended to do so, such as the iPhone, which everyone and their grandma seems to own. Gaming no longer appeals to one specific demographic of people, and this is going to change the way both console and game developers market their products to the public.

I think some people are viewing devices like the Kinect something of a threat to hardcore gaming, which it certainly isn't. I do however think it is ground breaking, in that it is that next big step to pull in a different crowd. It really makes me wonder where things will be in the next fifteen years or so.

Hmm, so how long before videos of people looking stupid using the Kinect start appearing en masse? :mrgreen:

So I got to try it out tonight. I played the Adventure game, and downloaded the Driving game DEMO. Both were a lot of fun and quite responsive! Biggest problem I have is the room. I thought my living room was big enough, but according to the Kinect, I can only play one person at a time, and even then it becomes difficult, but I think i can move the kinect further away to fix that problem, and it wasn't a HUGE problem. We even got 2 player actually working! And the 2 player response is fine, I've heard some complaints about having 2 players, but it was great!

And the driving game was really impressive. Took some getting use to (like the first time playing the Wii driving games), and I did get tired of holding my hands in the air (like I just don't care, hehe)

Doh, I've been avoiding playing it, now I'm going to have to. Kinect is cheaper than getting into a Wii for me because I already own a 360. I haven't even seen the driving game, is it really good? Does it let you sit and move your feet as though you were pressing pedals? I can't imagine they figured that much out.

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Originally Posted by sheath

Doh, I've been avoiding playing it, now I'm going to have to. Kinect is cheaper than getting into a Wii for me because I already own a 360. I haven't even seen the driving game, is it really good? Does it let you sit and move your feet as though you were pressing pedals? I can't imagine they figured that much out.

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i cannot think, but figures how tired can be this...

Nah, another Eye Toy... the fun will not last much i fear...

Since the next machine(s) will incorporate motion detection from the get-go, it can potentially lead to interesting applications like in-game head tracking and gesture-interaction, but with the sky-rocketing costs of development I don't think innovation is going to be the main focus for 8th gen consoles. Things are bad enough as it is.

A fancy Eyetoy is what Kinect is.

Well VGchartz is reporting nearly 500k Kinect Adventures sold for the week, which is the pack in Kinect title. Also three other Kinect games are in their top ten sales chart. The first Sony related title is the newest God of War PSP way down in the teens somewhere at 68k.

If the 32X analogy were going to persist, there would need to be a single game on one of the other platforms selling closely with Kinect at this point or at least catching up by Christmas. ;)

-edit-

Oh hey, I didn't notice I was looking at the week ending November 6th chart. That means that was pretty much just the Kinect launch window effect.