Don't Write Kinect Off So Early
- Thread starter HigherTomorrow
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Lean forward to accelerate or start moving, stand up straight to maintain speed, lean back to decelerate. Ok, so there could be other solutions, but it doesn't take a genius to think up a couple. Besides, if running on the spot works for the 100m hurdles in Kinect sports then you could just walk on the spot, there's no need to walk across your room. You could steer by moving one hand to any edge of the screen (not neccessarily right at the edge, just within a certain distance of, perhaps it could even turn faster the closer your hand is to the edge) to turn that way and the other hand for gesture based commands etc. Seriously, has anyone who is already dismissing Kinect actually thought about it for more than 5 minutes?mada7 said:
Yet if it would have been cheap enough, I bet the majority of people would have wanted the extra immersion that something like the Steel Battalion controller could provide. The controller is an extra step between player and game. The more natural that controller is, the more immersive the experience. Want a great star wars game? Give the player a lighsabre. Want a great shooting game? Give the player a gun. Ok, so Kinect arguably doesn't allow 'props' (although I bet it could if the publisher was willing to provide them with the game), but pointing a finger is still going to be more akin to pointing a gun than aiming a reticule using a thumbstick is. Movement is part of the player and thus the middle man is cut out. The benefit of Kinect (as apposed to the Wii or the Move) is that the lack of controller adds an extra layer of immersion (or more to the point it removes a barrier between player and game). It doesn't have to involve flailing around, because it's not limited to the movements of a little remote in your hand. Sure it'll probably take some getting used to (heck, who found the Resident Evil 'tank controls' intuitive the first time around?), but that doesn't make it harder, it just makes it different. I bet if you went back in time and handed a NES player an Xbox controller they would be confused as hell, but that wouldn't mean that the controller was a bad idea.SomethingAmazing said:
I'm saying this for the record more than anything - $150 and 4 people can play it with no peripherals.
To do that on the Wii:
4 Controllers 45 dollars each
4 Nunchuks 25 dollars each
4 MotionPlus 25 dollars each
Wii system - 210 dollars
= $490
On the PS3
System - 300 dollars
Camera - 50 dollars
4 moves - 50 each
4 sub-controllers - 30 dollars each
= $620
Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365120,00.asp
On the 360
System - 300
Kinect - 150
= $450 dollars
360 is the best price going!
To do that on the Wii:
4 Controllers 45 dollars each
4 Nunchuks 25 dollars each
4 MotionPlus 25 dollars each
Wii system - 210 dollars
= $490
On the PS3
System - 300 dollars
Camera - 50 dollars
4 moves - 50 each
4 sub-controllers - 30 dollars each
= $620
Source : http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365120,00.asp
On the 360
System - 300
Kinect - 150
= $450 dollars
360 is the best price going!
Yeah, I think people who dismiss the tech purely because of the movement/navigation controls are lacking in imagination. Hell, at its most basic you could hold a controller and use gestures to supplement the game. The god-awful film 'Gamer' had a full-body gestural interface - holding a hand out advanced, an aggressive point attacked, etc etc. It might seem superfluous to game using gestures rather than a controller, but maybe it would be more intuitive. And easier to come back to - I'm getting pissed off with mouse FPS controls cos after a month of not using them my aim is too rusty to enjoy the games I used to rock at :/Mako SOLDIER said:
The autenticity and immersion weren't an afterthought at all, they were part of the original point of the game. The creator wanted you to be unable to play the game again if you couldn't shatter a glass panel to hit the EJECT switch quickly enough. He had to back down and implement continues and a plastic flip-cover over the switch, but the controller was still part of the original design. Until people have actually used Kinect, there is absolutely no evidence for the statement that it will sacrifice playability or responsiveness, that's just an assumption. Sure, the Wil did that, because the technology was flawed. Even the motion+ needed constant recalibration. With a camera that's not the case. I'm not saying you can't be right on this (you might indeed), just that at the moment the evidence really does point the other way. Kinect is, from specs and demonstrations, easily capable of some very exciting things. If the developers screw up then yeah, it'll just become another crappy gimmick, but when one of them actually gets it right it'll be something pretty darned special. Can anyone say an elder scrolls game where the speechcraft skill is replaced by your actual ability to logically barter with the AI? You could still be sitting down with a controller, but your voice and facial expressions would play a huge part in the game. Or how about a boxing title where you can actually duck and weave realistically (if anyone mentions Wii boxing, yes, it was rubbish, but that's becasue it tried to simulate boxing with the wiimote and nunchuck combo. That was never going to work)? Full body motion mapping in a boxing title is something that could work ridiculously well. Dragon based flight sim where you flap your arms like wings and roar for bursts of acceleration? You'd get tired (and have to fly to a suitable safe perch to roost and recover),sure, and you'd look and sound a little (or a lot) silly, but I bet you'd be grinning like an idiot by the end of it. There are so many possibilities that people are overlooking because they'd rather just dismiss anything new.SomethingAmazing said:
It will come down to the software, because the potential is there. Thing is, of course there will be shovelware, that's sadly Nintendo's biggest(and worst) achievement with the Wii: proving to MS and Sony that shovelware sells, but there will hopefully also be games that do something new and different with it (or just do something different with the genres we already love). It's way too early to be writing it off without thinking about it.
Totally agree, it's like people were born with controllers in their hands and can't understand the idea of not pressing A to jump and right trigger to shoot.Wicky_42 said:
So.. awesome for Kinect
If you're just pissed off that there is such a thing as motion control then price doesn't matter... you're just out of luck. A shame that a group of people with more money than you DO want motion control I guess.
EDIT _ Bad form to edit this, but I forgot to mention: could you name 4 games on the 360 that allow you to do 4 player local multiplayer without Kinect? Because I can think of Halo and Madden and that's pretty much it.
So...awesome for 360 then? If you don't want motion control, then its cheaper without it. In comparison to the other models for motion control, Kinect is much cheaper. Let me put it this way: if you want a spoon and someone offers to sell you a fork at half price, that doesn't really help you. That doesn't mean its not an awesome deal for a fork, its just not what you want. What this tortured analogy means is that committing a logical fallacy doesn't make Kinect a bad deal... for people who want to play motion control party games.SomethingAmazing said:
If you're just pissed off that there is such a thing as motion control then price doesn't matter... you're just out of luck. A shame that a group of people with more money than you DO want motion control I guess.
EDIT _ Bad form to edit this, but I forgot to mention: could you name 4 games on the 360 that allow you to do 4 player local multiplayer without Kinect? Because I can think of Halo and Madden and that's pretty much it.
I didn't miss the 'big part' at all, it was irrelevant when you have yet to give a reason why Kinect is incapable of improving upon the gameplay of a given game. You claim that all motion controls do is replace buttons to control in-game motion with 'waggles' when not even the Wii is guilty of doing that with every game. Lazy developers do that, the technology doesn't.SomethingAmazing said:
Games have never had a way of reading a player's actions this clearly before, so of course they have been incapable of responding. Now, they will in fact be capable of responding to your actions if the developers feel that those actions are relevant to the gaming experience they intend to create. Again, the developers will have to do a good job with both the potential and any limitations of the technology.
Force feedback? Really? How on earth can you champion force feedback as some kind of holy grail of immersion while completely discounting the notion of a character that actually does exactly what you do? Immersion is literally just that: immersing the player in the game world. What better way to do that than to make their real world actions part of the game? we're not talking about 'waggle a stick to break free of a zombie' here, we're talking 'dive to the floor to avoid taking a spear to the head'.
So, hang on a second. Your now comparing a pice of actual working technology with 'brain control', an experimental tech that currently only really works as a 2-way switch capable of only producing a positive or negative result. Jeez, people are saying that a cat walking into shot might screw with Kinect and you're advocating a control method that (if it ever got that sophisticated) would go haywire if someone's mind wandered? You do realise how immensely difficult it would be to hold only a single thought in your head consistently when bombarded with the kind of emotional stimulus found in the average game? And you claim that motion control is limiting?
If your idea of an ideal game is 'think happy thoughts to go forward, think anything else to stop' then I'll pass thanks. I think I'll leave that to cheap 'Jedi Trainer' toys from Argos.
Seriously, you're dismissing something you clearly haven't paid any real attention to with no real evidence other than essentially "Well, the Wii has been a bit crap, so obviously all motion control will be". I'm not going to put any more energy into this debate, as it seems that you're pretty irrationally inflexible on this topic. I wish you no ill will, but I just hope that if truly ground breaking Kinect titles do indeed come along that you won't be too stubborn to give them a shot.
Well I think it sucks because:HigherTomorrow said:
If I'm paying $150 for retarded motion controls I might as well pay $200 and have retarded motion controls with Metroid.
The launch titles are crap, they look like Wii rejects(and that's saying something).
And motion controls are only useful in crappy minigame full titles so why would I even be interested?
