Quote:
Originally Posted by McG
kinect; i have a wii and i will be buying a kinect; it may in fact render my wii obsolete. i never play the thing and with the perpetual shovelware that comes out for the platform it will be only signature titles that i buy going forward. kinect gives hidef gaming in a format that casual gamers and children will enjoy. as far as i can tell, the games are launch titles, just like other platform's launch titles, and they will get better/more complex as developers get a sense of what consumers want and what kind of code they can use. i would spend $150 for a kinect and my existing xbox rather than $250 or whatever for a new wii when it comes out. wii owns the children's and casual gamers demographic because you can pick up and play the games easily. i don't see how kinect is meant to be any different for gameplay.
xbox and microsoft: the average gamer is 35 and the average game buyer is 39; pretty desirable demographics. no platform will abandon that, and m$ is no different. hard core games aren't going away; some might argue that the kinect gives another tool for game play than taking one away. i love the idea of playing star wars and use the force myself and not a button; dark jedi throat chokes would be sweet! but the idea that i can perform a button mashing combo in a fighting game is only true if my wife has an ambulance ready to go. i just don't see any developer or platform abandoning the controller because hard core gamers will demand it until this motion sensing stuff exceeds their expectations. microsoft already has the highest number of games bought per console; kinect is a view to getting more games per unit. many don't realize that the profit isn't in the console, it is in the games and peripherals. i think the kinect haters need to let the market decide if the masses like it or not. so far, hardcore gamers have given a meh or worse, but that was always going to be the case and m$ would have known that beforehand.
the battle for the living room: someone posted this above, but microsoft and sony aren't in a battle for the gamer, it is for the living room. nintendo has been successful showing that it didn't have to pander to the hardcore gamer, and sony and m$ want that too. nintendo grew the market essentially. kinetic is intended to be wireless at some point, and i would think that placing multiple cheap, wireless kinects around the house with a centrally located 360 would be a goal; i can assure you that it would be mine. my disappointment is with the lack of a bluray player in the 360, but is a pipe dream anyways. m$ (and the other platforms for that matter) are really pushing the streaming (except in canada apparently) and so not surprised, except it still cedes the blu ray differentiator to sony.
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Most of the negativity in this thread towards Kinect is because a) all the games shown have already been done on the Wii, and b) it's an extra cost on top of the system. How many people in their average demographic you mention want to play Wii Sports with no controller? I certainly am not jumping out of my seat to preorder a Kinect.
If you're trying to take a piece of the pie of the casual market (as you put it, taking away the use of the Wii since Kinect does it better apparently), you're going to market to the same people who buy Wii games for their families. First you need to sell them on spending more money on an accessory (no guarantees), then get them to buy the shovelware they might own on the Wii. If you're trying to cater to the hardcore gamers, they got to an awful start with no support to their current users, so to speak.
Not too many people care about hi-def yet. It's not a requirement so to speak. My parents or some kids could care less if it's 480p or 1080p when they're playing Random Party Game. Also, when the Wii came out everyone was saying "give them some time to work with the system and better games will come out". Has that happened? Not really. The only game I've played on the Wii recently has been Mario Galaxy 2, and it has very little use of the remote. I'm skeptical Kinetic will move beyond gimmicky control schemes (I'm thinking they limit the amount you can do in a star wars game for example because too much means the system can confuse your movements), but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
(Note: I have all three current gen systems and I don't have a favorite, they all do different things for me.)