Kinect'ing People! A hands free 'hands on'

Kinect is going to be an integral tool that introduces gaming into more households than ever before. Effectively, Microsoft have come to finish the job that Nintendo started with the Wii back in 2006. There’s no doubt about it, no matter how Sony may think otherwise, Kinect is going to be the present everyone wants this Christmas and after trialling it, it’s not difficult to see why. Anyone can jump straight into Kinect, stand in front of the camera and be a part of a game. It’s as if gaming is being started from scratch and everyone is being forced to adapt.

Good or bad, I find out if Kinect really is the future.

During my trial, I played with two people who aren’t extensive gamers alongside myself and my girlfriend who play games on the Xbox regularly. When both my girlfriend and I were playing Joy Ride with our friends, we got slaughtered, every… single… time. No matter how many successful laps of Forza I’ve had in the past, no matter how many times I’ve whipped around the cities in Project Gotham or propelled ahead at high velocity in Gran Turismo, Joy Ride still had lessons to teach me. I came 8/8 during every race I played and I’d even learned how to do boosting and stunts in mid air. Clearly, previous involvement with games of a similar ilk has no bearing on your capabilities within Kinect games. From my experience, it actually seems that non-regular gamers found it easier to adjust than those of us who are used to controllers. Our posture was all wrong and we were a little rigid, as we are too used to having a prop to focus our intensity on. i.e the controller.

When you first play Kinect, especially if you are a regular gamer, you’re going to be very surprised by how important every aspect of your body is to your own individual progress within a game and your general success rate. Having only trialled three of the games in Kinect Adventures, and Joy Ride, I didn’t get to see everything Kinect can do, but have enough perspective now to see just how important this will be to the way gaming will be played from this point forward. The slightest twitch of your leg, or the force you put behind the swing of your arm, is all crucial to your performance. In River Rush, you can have up to two people playing, each at either side of the raft, and you will need to use teamwork in order to maximise your points; both steering the raft by moving your bodies and jumping in order to reach the Adventure Points. Whereas, in Ricochet, a dodgeball type game, you will need to use every part of your body in order to perform at your best.

While there will be Xbox Live support within certain titles, Joy Ride will enable you to have eight people playing over Xbox Live at one time, the focus of Kinect will be in your living room. In an age where online gaming dominates the multiplayer market, Kinect looks set to bring the party back into your own home and that’s why this Christmas, finding one of these is probably going to be very difficult, but worth the trouble!

Kinect is going to open doors wide for the future. Anyone who has not necessarily been into gaming before is suddenly going to be given a rich opportunity to embrace it as never before. Casual gamers will be in the same boat as those who take pride in being labelled ‘hardcore’ and it will now be possible for people with handicaps and ailments to ascend to gaming greatness and compete with others on an even playing field, something which has never been possible until now. In that regard, Kinect is truly revolutionary.

It’s easy to see why some would be annoyed by this abrupt change in the gaming landscape, players have been used to using a game pad for years, adjusting to directional buttons or analogue sticks for movements and the tap of a button prompting a character to jump or punch. With Kinect, the individual has become the controller and every action is determined by the way you move your body. Suddenly, it’s all about dexterity, flexibility and endurance as opposed to who can button mash the fastest.

Some may argue that Kinect offers too much freedom and that developers aren’t going to make full use of the capabilities. I wonder whether the five year lifespan Kinect has been given will be enough time for developers to truly get an idea for what can really be done with the technology. It’s worth noting that Sony’s Move is being supported by most of Sony’s forthcoming A-List franchises (such as Killzone 3, Motorstorm Apocalypse and Little Big Planet 2), whereas Microsoft have yet to associate any of their key franchises with Kinect, with games initially announced or rumoured to feature Kinect support no longer receiving it. Don’t they trust their multi-million dollar project with their multi-million dollar game franchises? Do they think people wouldn’t play them? As I previously alluded, people who weren’t gamers before can suddenly become gamers; shouldn’t they get a chance to be competitive in the games that people class as ‘hardcore’, or would Kinect support cheapen the experience?

All I know is that my hands-on with Kinect was an eye-opener. Microsoft have created something fun for everyone, something that will make non-gamers interested and want to get in on the fun too. However, it may have some way to go before it proves to the fence sitters and the doubters that this is a revolution, that it is the next step and that it is as important to their gaming collection as anything that may have come before it.

Ahead of the Game?

Is there such a thing as being ‘too ahead’ of the game? Sony may very well have stumbled across that issue with the release of Playstation 3 almost four years ago. They bundled a Blu-Ray player with the console, but at the time of its release everyone had only just fully converted from video to DVD and the value of DVD’s had dropped to an affordable level. There was a comfortable balance established by the consumer and the market for the first time in several years. Then Sony won the HD war against Microsoft, who had bundled the HD-DVD with the Xbox 360, and so High Definition finally made an impact into the home market. Unfortunately, at this point, Blu-Rays were top flight prices, and normally for old films that have been remastered, and High Definition wasn’t really important enough to people to make them consider the switch. So what were Sony left with? An overly expensive console with a limited batch of games and a market that wasn’t quite ready for the next gen. Sony really suffered with this, losing millions hand over foot, putting them on the back burner from the get-go and allowing Microsoft and Nintendo to curry more favour with consumers. It’s only recently that Sony have managed to turn a profit on their system and that Blu-Ray is finally starting to get people’s attention.

However, just as Sony have finally put themselves back in the race, they almost seem ready to take themselves out again. In fairness, this time it’s a bit different as the Playstation 3 is in more homes than it was at launch, but with the announcement of a 3D patch to support most upcoming games, PS3 owners without a 3DTV are once again not going to benefit from the full Playstation 3 gaming experience. Before I go further, this isn’t related to Move, as that’s a separate entity altogether and is at a much more affordable price point. However, with 3D television only just coming onto the market, and at such a hefty price, are Sony trying to push us into the next generation too quickly, again?

When you consider that 3D has only recently become a sustainable trend, especially in cinemas, I believe that all of this is happening too fast. I’m not saying I’m not one for change, and that I dislike how things develop and evolve, but I still think the home market isn’t quite ready for the changes Sony are fixing to make such an important part of their feature system. When you consider the IMAX cinema is still very much in its infancy and is only in select parts of the World, with many people still not even sure what it is, many people are still happy to see a film without the embellishments. Also, a lot of people have only just fully converted to the High Definition Television and gotten used to being Digital Ready within the last year or so. Is this really the best time to tell them that it is already "old", and to keep up with technology they are going to have to spend more of their hard earned money?

There’s always been a market for the consumer with the money to afford the ultimate home experience. Before flat screen TV’s became the norm for everyone, you can bet that they were in select homes around the World being experienced by those with the money to back it. The same is true of 3D televisions, as I’m sure by now several people out there are enjoying their 50" Sony televisions and watching Eastenders with big beefy glasses on their head, whereas everyone else is probably making do with a 32” and is quite happy thank you very much.

And what about those who are said not to be able to experience 3D at all? The 12% of Britons who apparently can’t ‘see’ 3D. Does this now segregate and isolate them? Will they be left out in the cold in these plans? Just as perhaps the gaming pad of old isolated some people from playing console games and now Wii, Kinect and Move opens those doors, so 3D gaming could be about to slam the door shut in the face of another set of consumers. Such as is the case with technology undoubtedly, but it raises an arguable point.

I feel that Nintendo have learned from their previous mistakes with the Wii and motion control and are approaching this appropriately, making a self-contained 3D handheld system where you can switch the 3D effects on and off and bringing it out at an affordable price point. Frankly, I don’t think some people are even sure if they’re ready for 3D or not, or whether they want it to become such a big part of their lives. Nintendo are at least making a handheld system that provides those capabilities but also enables you to turn it off and play as normal without the need for a super expensive rig in order for it to work. With a few years experience of this, it’ll finally give people a chance to see whether or not this is appropriate for them. Nintendo at least appear to be giving people a choice and phasing it in gradually, whereas Sony are already making big plans to include it in their feature line-up of games heading into 2011. At present, they’re only utilising it with a limited library, but imagine when the library gets bigger and the releases are on a larger scale, how much promotion can we expect?

Especially when you consider the likes of Killzone 3 and Motorstorm Apocalypse, two of Sony’s feature titles, are making it an important part of the gaming experience.

It's also quite interesting to note Microsoft’s strategy doesn’t involve 3D gaming as yet and they’re being a lot more relaxed with it and allowing it to ‘progress naturally’.

With Sony being ahead of the game on this, they will have time to refine and tweak the technology to the best possible configuration when everyone else is ‘ready’ to get on board. In the meantime though, this smacks as more of an effort to bleed money out of the consumer rather than to release at a time more appropriate to them and to just deprive them of the absolutely best way to experience their Playstation 3 titles; something they probably felt assured they had when they got their HDTV set up.

Perhaps it’s me that’s behind the times, and I’m struggling to keep up with these rapid changes to the World of technology... When you consider how quickly things are replaced and are updated, perhaps I’m just more out of the technological loop than I care to admit. However, I don’t think 3D has had enough chance to blossom and prove itself to people to be a worthy enough purchase. Need I remind you that 3D was tried in the 80’s and it flopped massively. Granted, technology has evolved immeasurably since, but it’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time developers have tried to make this work.

Right now, 3D is just a fun gimmick that is available to more people than ever before, and that’s fantastic. You can go to the cinema anytime you want, wear those goofy glasses for a few hours and go home at end of play. But is the World really ready for that in their living room, can we deal with the extensive, intensive use required for a computer game or your regular stream of television programmes?

Do you think the future is being rammed down our throats too fast, too soon?