Anyone else sceptical about xbox's new kinect?
Now i have no idea how good kinect's hardware will be. I dread it will be like the Wii; unresponsive, delayed and inaccurate. But that's not my biggest fear, because you can work around that with good software.
My main fear is the games that will be released for it. I remember when i first played Wii's launch title, Wii Sports, it instantly dawned on me that it was just a extremely simplistic arcade game, just with weird controls. The motion sensor isn't actually incorporated into the game at all.
For example tennis, you swing the remote when the ball reaches you (actually before it reaches you because there is a delayed response) and the character hits the ball, great.. But the character will do the exact same swing on screen no matter how you swing the remote. The Wii just detects a motion within pre-defined limits of 'swing' and you do a swing in the game. Effectively all you are doing is pressing one button, the 'swing the racket' button, just your pressing it in a novel way. This completely defeats the point of a motion sensors. I would much rather play the tennis game with a controller with one button on it, than an unresponsive motion sensor, not that a game with just one button is anything more than a 10 minute pass time.
When playing Wii the first time i realized that it wasn't the hardware that was the limiting factor, but the software. I thought "This hardware has potential, but some developer needs to find a creative use for it." But alas.. Wii games are all just an old arcade-ish concept with a shitty control system shoe horned in. I mean think of the possibilities of a sword game with motion sensor! But no.. a sword games on the Wii is just the same as every other console, but with flailing of the arm X = pushing A button, flailing of the arm Y = pushing B button.
And this is why i think Kinect will be shit. The games will just take old concepts, shoe horn a shit control scheme onto them, all the while trumpeting to the world the revolution of gaming as we know it.
It will take a game that can't be played with a mouse, controller, or keyboard to justify Kinect's existence, and with more depth than a flash game to keep me interested.
Now i have no idea how good kinect's hardware will be. I dread it will be like the Wii; unresponsive, delayed and inaccurate. But that's not my biggest fear, because you can work around that with good software.
My main fear is the games that will be released for it. I remember when i first played Wii's launch title, Wii Sports, it instantly dawned on me that it was just a extremely simplistic arcade game, just with weird controls. The motion sensor isn't actually incorporated into the game at all.
For example tennis, you swing the remote when the ball reaches you (actually before it reaches you because there is a delayed response) and the character hits the ball, great.. But the character will do the exact same swing on screen no matter how you swing the remote. The Wii just detects a motion within pre-defined limits of 'swing' and you do a swing in the game. Effectively all you are doing is pressing one button, the 'swing the racket' button, just your pressing it in a novel way. This completely defeats the point of a motion sensors. I would much rather play the tennis game with a controller with one button on it, than an unresponsive motion sensor, not that a game with just one button is anything more than a 10 minute pass time.
When playing Wii the first time i realized that it wasn't the hardware that was the limiting factor, but the software. I thought "This hardware has potential, but some developer needs to find a creative use for it." But alas.. Wii games are all just an old arcade-ish concept with a shitty control system shoe horned in. I mean think of the possibilities of a sword game with motion sensor! But no.. a sword games on the Wii is just the same as every other console, but with flailing of the arm X = pushing A button, flailing of the arm Y = pushing B button.
And this is why i think Kinect will be shit. The games will just take old concepts, shoe horn a shit control scheme onto them, all the while trumpeting to the world the revolution of gaming as we know it.
It will take a game that can't be played with a mouse, controller, or keyboard to justify Kinect's existence, and with more depth than a flash game to keep me interested.
