Kinect: Hit or Miss?

[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.

[runback22]

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...

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....

[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.

[mrbigreddog]

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.

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

[Why-Disciple]

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

[mrbigreddog]

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

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

[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.

[kool kitty89]

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.

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

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

[sheath]

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.

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.

[OldSchool]

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).

[sheath]

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

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

[gamevet]

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.

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.

[TheFace]

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.

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.

[Acidonia]

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....

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.

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.

[kool kitty89]

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 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)

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.

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.