The Xbox 360 Kinect Reviews Are Out

[Bolivar]

And they're not great.

The verdict seems to be that if you don't have 8-10 feet of space between you and your TV, it's just not going to work for you. If you don't have even more than that, you can say goodbye to multiplayer. If you do have enough space, it may not work unless you adjust your lighting, change your clothes, and move your furniture. Once that's not an issue, the interface is unreliable via voice control and unnecessarily slow via motion control. Finally, the most important part of this, the games, are not only tiring to play, but don't live up to the visual quality you'd expect from a High Definition console because of the RAM needed for Kinect alone. Some of them are said to be fun, but the novelty seems to wear thin fairly quickly. The biggest problem, however, is the intrinsic fact that you can't actually move your character, you can only control what they do while standing still, or on rails at a speed the game determines.

It just doesn't seem like a viable interface for video games.

Kotaku seemed to be the most positive, saying it's amazing but you can wait for it, all the while acknowledging that the current firmware functionality and software lineup doesn't deliver on its potential.

Joystiq and Engadget both knocked it for its difficulty and sometimes failure in working, and most of the games got pretty bad grades.

ArsTechnica seemed the most brutally honest - the games were fun, but everything else said about it pretty much condemned the thing.

[Dreddz]

I have nothing against Kinect and hope it brings MS some money considering how hard they are pushing the device. But the whole idea of it changing video games was BS from day 1. When I see a game like Bayonetta running on Kinect maybe Ill listen but until then GTFO.

[Roto13]

You shouldn't be allowed to make Xbox threads.

[DMKA]

Seriously, was anyone excited for the inferior EyeToy Knockoff Kinect after E3?

[NorthernChaosGod]

I have nothing against Kinect and hope it brings MS some money considering how hard they are pushing the device. But the whole idea of it changing video games was BS from day 1. When I see a game like Bayonetta running on Kinect maybe Ill listen but until then GTFO.

smurf that, when I can play Halo: Reach with Kinect, then I might give it a shot.

[Roto13]

Seriously, was anyone excited for the inferior EyeToy Knockoff Kinect after E3?

It may be the same basic idea as the EyeToy, but it's definitely not inferior. :P (I'm not saying it's good, but the EyeToy is clearly worse. :P)

[DMKA]

Seriously, was anyone excited for the inferior EyeToy Knockoff Kinect after E3?

It may be the same basic idea as the EyeToy, but it's definitely not inferior. :P (I'm not saying it's good, but the EyeToy is clearly worse. :P)

I disagree. The EyeToy at least knew it was crap and kept it's standards extremely low. Kinect is being marketed as the birth of an entire new medium, which it simply isn't.

And speaking as someone who has spent no more than 30 minutes playing with the EyeToy and the Kinect, from my experience, the EyeToy I played with eight years ago was far more accurate and impressive a piece of technology than the Kinect. If, however, the Kinect was what Microsoft has made it out to be and continues to market it as (hell, maybe it will be eventually, but I wouldn't bet on it) it would indeed be an awesome piece of gaming hardware.

But I'm not the least bit intrigued by all the motion control crap so perhaps I'm a tad prejudicial in my opinions on any of these devices.

[Madame Adequate]

I'm not surprised. Motion control is unraveling even for Nintendo (I don't remember the last Wii game which was talked about because of motion control, only the revivals of core Nintendo franchises). Which is as I predicted because soccer moms and old people don't buy consoles and games during a recession. If MS had got this out of the door a couple of years ago there might have been some mileage for them, as it stands I reckon this is going to tank pretty hard, just like all motion control ultimately will until it can give meaningful physical feedback.

[G13]

^Agreed.

Motion control has never intrigued me because you can do all of nothing with it. It's ugly and, really, exercising is the last thing I want to do while playing a video game.

The Move looks like it might actually do what they're promising but I don't think it will be enough to keep the motion control craze alive.

From the first time I heard about Kinect I knew it would bomb and I can't say I'm sorry that it has. I have more control over the game with a controller than I do with my own hands or a wand.

[Yeargdribble]

From the first time I heard about Kinect I knew it would bomb and I can't say I'm sorry that it has. I have more control over the game with a controller than I do with my own hands or a wand.

I think it's a little early to be calling this one. The Kinect hasn't failed yet and I have the feeling it will be a tremendous financial success in the long-term. The whole Oprah fiasco has practically ensured that many people will rush out to get it (who otherwise wouldn't). Not to mention, it will probably be the tech gift for kids this Christmas. MS is being smart about its marketing. They are marketing it at the people that made the Wii (which we also all laughed at and have called a failure) a huge seller. It's the people who aren't core gamers.

Sony isn't aiming at those people really. Sony is trying to be serious about Move and I think it's going to hurt them (just like it hurt PSP). They are trying to be more adult and make broader claims about the broader uses of their device rather than going for the low hanging fruit of marketing it at gullible people who don't know the difference between an NES and toaster the way Xbox is. I think the Wii stumbled on this and was being earnest about wanting to get everyone involved. MS is just being pragmatic and lying to people to an extent.

Sorry, but most people don't have the means to play with Kinect. The biggest limiting factor is going to be living room size, but I don't feel like they've been entirely up front about that.

[G13]

I don't mean 'bomb' as in 'not make a lot of money', I think tons of people are going to see the commercial and think "That looks awesome!", buy it, and be very disappointed.

I suppose I should have used better wording to say I don't think it's going to get any better than how it is now. How long has it been since the 360 was released and how many 'RROD proof' consoles have we seen before this recent Kinect ready and "This time we mean it guys, it's RROD proof" one? As much as I love my 360 I strongly feel that MS are a bunch of assholes by releasing before it's ready and I'm fairly sure that Kinect will be no different.

I'll probably one day give it a try but I'll most definitely be very surly and negative towards it because I just really don't like motion control.

[Iceglow]

I'm going to be blunt, Bolivar you're such a ps3 fanboy Roto is right I can put one post up with a few offhand comments in and you blow up in to a storm of fanboy defence of your console it's hillarious (SPOILER)yes this does mean I troll you from time to time just like you troll or try to troll 360 owners on here, you really should never make a 360 thread you just could never be at the least impartial with it.

On to Kinect, we've got it up in store (again) to be fair it is fun, it's good fun too, bit of a pain to set up but having been on it for a good part of yesterday I can say fun once you do. It's far superior to the eye toy considering that the eyetoy registered movement from anything walking past where kinect will register the movement of you and nothing else (we've proven this by doing the international distress signal walking in front of others using it) which is a good benefit of the technology. The whole distance from the screen thing is a load of crap sorry but we've got the kinect sensor set up with around 5ft of space to use infront of the screen, it works fine.

Games wise, the best of the bunch really right now is going to be Kinect Sports though Kinect Dance is equally a good laugh from the looks of it, should it work how it is meant to it will sell well over christmas for sure going on the popularity of games such as Just Dance 2 on the Wii. However to expect there only to be crap shovelware or "Wii" style games for Kinect is wrong, at the moment in development is a brand new Steel Batallion game, Older or more experienced gamers will remember the first as having been released on the original xbox and came with a £130 price tag and it's own 2 joystick, 3 pedal, 60+ button control pad and for being one of the more brutal mech combat games ever made such as expecting you to eject if the mech got too trashed before it got destroyed so you could get a new one, failure meant restarting everything. Steel Batallion looks anything but terrible having looked at the screens available for it and frankly it could work well with Kinnect putting you inside the cockpit of your mech though admittedly a 40+ inch tv screen would be good for this if there are individual buttons on screen to use. This shows that Microsoft as Sony have indeed begun to attempt with new re-released of Heavy Rain, Resident Evil 5 and other games with move features which is the incorporate the serious gamers with their motion control, personally I'm far more endeared by the prospect of a full game designed speciffically for Kinect than a re-release of a game I completed ages ago just because it has a few "motion sensitive" additions.

Now, Playstation Move has been touched upon briefly here and so I will comment on this too: Whilst the cheapest of the 3 for the initial starter kit it soon enters the same issues as the Wii, it is expensive, some games will require a player to hold 2 wands each, that means for 4 player party games using such a control system they could require 8 wands in the uk this comes to a great price of £294.92 (£34.99 per wand + £49.99 for the starter kit) including the cost of the starter pack, that is more than a 320gb ps3 itself costs. Say the same person then wants 4 navigation remotes so that if they need them they're there thats an extra £100 (or £99.96 to be precise for 4 £24.99 navigation remotes) no games there apart from the starter disc which is a demo disc no more. Games for Move retail at around £29.99 per title. Move's biggest flaw is that Sony have been very careful to follow the Nintendo policy of making things appear cheaper than they are compared to Microsoft's charge high for the one piece of technology you need. It's fine really, but like the Wii when customers work out the cost of the equipment they could need to buy they're often put off from buying. As I said I work shopfloor in a games department and I see this first hand whenever I go in to work which is daily. However Move is by far superior to the Wii even with the handful of games it has at the moment of this post being written which just got bolstered today by the release of a new time crisis game amongst others. The 3rd plane of motion which can be tracked because of the camera tracking the wand is a major crushing blow to the Wii which can't do that. However long term, I'm seeing more arcade style games for the PSMove than for Kinect which kinda points out the flaw in the whole "Microsoft shovelware, Sony going for substance" idea what is being bandied around in this thread, Move gets a Time Crisis game, Kinect will be getting a serious mech combat game what is based on one of the most challenging and punnishing games of it's genre of all time.

Ok well enough for now, I've gotta get ready to go put a shift in probably playing on Kinect for most of it to demostrate it to customers.

[JKTrix]

Ignoring the actual topic of discussion; this is pretty cool.

YouTube - Look at Kinect using IR goggles.

Edit: Better video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvvQJxgykcU

[Madame Adequate]

I'll be incredibly surprised if the Kinect has the fidelity of control needed to do a game like Steel Battalion justice. Well, both fidelity of control, and able to create motions for all of its controls without resorting to silly things like "Stand on one left to change weapons" or what have you.

[NeoCracker]

Totally relavant.

That being said, Move blows kinect out of the water. Why? Because the dude doing all the PS3 advertisements is funny.

Other than that, I don't really care about either one. (Unrelated, but after I replace my computer in December, I may well just get another 360, with games like NN2 and Gears 3 and a few others. )