Impressions of MicroSoft’s Kinect from E3

Before E3 this year, everyone knew one of the aces Microsoft had up its sleeve.  Kinect was hardly a secret since both Microsoft and Sony realized the potential market of motion control with the sales of Nintendo’s Wii.  Most of the hard-core gaming community pretty much dismissed motion control as they prefer the more precise control that hand-held controllers offer.  One of the main reason’s the Wii was never really accepted by the hard-core audience is its lack of controller accuracy, the other gripe being the lack of HD.

Microsoft has raised the bar, in my opinion with the advent of Kinect.  It wasn’t really their invention, however.  A company called PrimeSense actually developed the technology behind Kinect.  The obvious difference between Kinect and Sony’s Move or the Wii is that there is no hand-held controller needed for Kinect.  What Kinect does instead is use a camera to take an image of the room and by placing a grid upon that image and measuring the changes (light, movement, etc.) in each of the grid sections; it sends signals to the Xbox console to perform different actions.  It also has an integrated microphone for voice commands.  Another big plus is the field of view of the camera.  Apparently it has a 70-degree field of view, meaning that you can be 70-degrees off axis and still be seen by the Kinect.

This all-in-all sounds great, so where is the down-side you say?  In a word, the down side is games.  There aren’t that many, many good ones anyway.  Yes, yes Microsoft is touting 15 titles at launch, but how many times can you play tennis or bowling without losing interest?  I played tennis back in the 80s, it was called Pong, get over it.  True, the potential is there.  In fact I am interested in the unit, especially since I own a 360, but the fact remains that there will not be a serviceable library for some time.  Although the Wii is technologically a step behind Kinect and Sony’s Move, it has a huge library of games.  Most of those are crap-ware but, hey they are there.

To wrap up, I hope developers utilize Kinect to put out some awesome titles that use it to its full potential.  For right now, however, there is no killer-app for Microsoft to show off.  I’ll fully admit that I bought an Xbox to play KOTOR, and friends of mine bought a Wii for Wii Sports, until the Kinect has its Wii Sports, sales will be directed at the casual market.  This is not a bad business idea, but will not fly well with the hard-core audience.