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Is Microsoft's Kinect a Gaming Failure?
MojoKid writes "E3 is well underway in Los Angeles, and Microsoft has already made a major splash with its 'SmartGlass' technology, game demos, and its announcement that a Kinect-powered version of Internet Explorer will debut on the Xbox 360. This is a marked change from last year, when Kinect was the unquestioned centerpiece of Microsoft's display and the company's demos focused on how Kinect-powered games used your full body as a controller. Kinect is in the interesting position of having sold extremely well while failing to move the bar forward in any of the ways Microsoft projected in the run up to its launch. Scroll through the ratings on Kinect-required titles, and the percentages are abysmal. Kinect's biggest problem is rooted in ergonomics. Gamepads with buttons may be crude approximations of real life, but they're simple and intuitive. They're also flexible — a great many games have conditional scenarios that allow the same button to perform different functions depending on what's going on within the game. Pure Kinect games don't have a simple mechanism to incorporate these features, and there's no easy way around them. The motion-controller's most enduring features may ultimately be its capabilities outside the gaming sphere."
While I agree that the motion controller features could be considered a failure for gaming purposes, its voice control capabilities are its most enduring feature to me. Being able to control the various video streaming services by talking to the TV still feels like we are living in the future.
Scroll through the ratings on Kinect-required titles, and the percentages are abysmal.
Scroll through? Scroll where? Let's head over to amazon then and see how they're doing:
Do I need to keep scrolling? I don't see many games with reviews under 3 stars. Where are these supposed abysmal ratings?
I love Valve, but just because the biggest publishers don't make games you want doesn't mean they don't make games that most people want. Here's the list of the 10 best selling games in the US for 2011:
1. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (360, PS3, Wii, PC) - Activision
2. Just Dance 3 (Wii, 360, PS3) - Ubisoft
3. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (360, PS3, PC) - Bethesda
4. Battlefield 3 (360, PS3, PC) - EA
5. Madden NFL 12 (360, PS3, Wii, PSP, PS2) - EA
6. Call of Duty: Black Ops (360, PS3, Wii, NDS, PC) - Activision
7. Batman: Arkham City (360, PS3, PC) - Warner Brothers
8. Gears of War 3 (360) - Microsoft
9. Just Dance 2 (Wii) - Ubisoft
10. Assassin's Creed: Revelations (360, PS3, PC) - Ubisoft
Basically, all the publishers everyone hates and swears they'll never buy from again dominate the list. I hate a lot of them too (although the only one I won't buy from anymore is Ubisoft), but I don't pretend that my views are the norm. The fact is EA, Activision and Ubisoft basically print money, whether I like their games or not I have to admit they're doing something right.
Microsoft promoted the Kinect as intuitive. But being intuitive is not enough for motion controls. The motion itself must be fun to do. Thus your dance games are very popular because dancing is fun. Aerobics is fun for some people and painfull for others. Running in place is not very fun. The Kinect is succesfull if all it does is replace dance pads. That is a big enough market for gaming companies to put out games.
This is the same nonsense that goes on in every media industry. There are artists that produce what's really changing the industry, that are creating the real art.... Then there are giant media houses that do nothing more than buy up the content those artists made, promote and capitalize on it. Music is a perfect example. Really great bands often don't make much money... soon after they make their debuet, revolutionary album, all of the hack bands that have their music written for them are doing the same thing, but have huge publishers behind them paying radio stations to play their songs and getting them spots on Jay Lenno.
Did you notice that every single title in that list is a sequel? And none of them are even based on a game that wasn't half assed copy of something some smaller studio designed first. The difference is marketing dollars.
The average kinect game involves making some exaggerated flailing motions that map onto some canned animations. Even then it often screws up or gets confused. There's only so far you can go with that system. Sports / fitness / dance games are the main focus but there isn't much beyond that. There have been a few genuinely innovative attempts to use kinect in a novel way that have almost succeeded such as Once Upon a Monster but most games have been dire and people have gotten bored of it.
Whether Kinect is a failure depends on exactly how you define success.
-- Controlling the games we're used to playing on the xbox? FAIL.
-- Getting good reviews from people who review games on our favorite gaming websites? FAIL.
-- Selling a lot of units? WIN.
-- Has some games that some consumers really like? WIN.
-- Good as an input mechanism for some interesting non-traditional uses? WIN.
-- The future of gaming? FAIL.
-- The future of computer-human interaction? PROBABLY.
As an additional note, the first version isn't terribly awesome, but inevitably it'll get better in the future.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.