Microsoft Kinect: a cute novelty.

by WyldKard on June 29, 2010

We haven’t weighed in on ’s Kinect (formerly “Project Natal”) because we haven’t seen anything exciting about it yet. Maybe it’s better than ’s Move, and advancing what the provided from a technological perspective. But let’s step back for a moment and look at where this all began, with ’s current console offering.

We picked up a Wii on release. We waited in line overnight, for crying out loud. And we did thoroughly enjoy the initial titles we played, but let’s be clear: they weren’t groundbreaking titles. Good titles with motion control, yes, but not groundbreaking titles in and of themselves. Maybe motion control is what made the unique, and sold casual to the masses, and maybe even pushed into family entertainment centers where parents were previously skeptical of as family-friendly entertainment. But as far as titles go, there’s no single game that’s more fun to play than any great title on any other console lacking motion control. (For example, the original Mario Kart was no less fun than the current Mario Kart is today.)

Yes, we’ll make a small exception for workout titles; EA Sports is a fantastic at-home workout for those without a gym who want to get into better cardiovascular shape, and traditional control schemes obviously wouldn’t work in this regard. But EA Sports, and games of this ilk, are not exactly fun titles in the traditional sense.

So now with Kinect set to release late this year, we have another motion control scheme, albeit without a physical controller necessary. And this may work well for casual games, and probably pretty good for workout titles also (there will, after all, be an EA Sports title for Kinect). But for other ? If anything, is looking to grab more users and capitalize on the fact that a good chunk of gamers own both a , and an /PS3. Capturing the “casual” crowd is an expected move for , who has already moved in that direction during the dashboard re-do (avatars, et al).

We’re highly skeptical that Kinect will bring anything worthwhile to the table if one already has a sitting next to their ; Kinect is the peripheral for the . It’s a cool idea, but nothing more than a novelty, which conveniently comes out mid-way through the 360 lifecycle. If anything, it combats ’s move of potentially releasing an HD , forcing to up their ante and delay a new product release more in line with and ’s next generation, else simply throw in the towel like Sega did after the Dreamcast.

Either way, the Kinect alone won’t win the battle here; the Kinect is a reactive move by . Not in the way that the Move is ’s reaction to the (which is playing catch-up more than anything else), but in the sense of allowing the to be a competitor to the on all angles – not just meeting the ’s capabilities, but arguably exceeding them without adding cumbersome, physical controllers. This move will likely pay off in keeping the 360 situated as the premiere US console, but probably won’t force out of the console business entirely, unless is able to capture some choice IP for Kinect-based games.

We just don’t see the Kinect doing much to sway the console wars one way or the other at this point. The has already been widely adopted, and so the potential installation-base in -less households appears very small. Unless there are some killer titles out there that make having Kinect outrageously desireable (and we haven’t seen any yet), why drop the money on Kinect?

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