Razgreez said:
As i similarly asked another poster further up in this thread, how does kinect capture your imagination? What potential can you realistically see in it keeping in mind its current stumbling blocks
Well kinect "captures my imagination" mainly in applications that are not game related.
The main idea is that because it doesn't require a controller and can read natural movements, it can be made available at any time for all sorts of services. A bit like the old cliché of the Pasha in ancient Middle-East, clapping his hands and asking for anything and a slave will bring it to him.
In this case, it will not revolutionize the applications themselves, but the way you have access to them. Browse the local news and check weather previsions while eating your breakfast. Play an interactive recipe while you're cooking at the same time. Take a video call while watching TV. Or do any combination of those.
As for the use in games, you have to think about the strengths of the device and not its weaknesses, to see what can be done.
The main feature is that it measures an information that is less precise than a button press, but also more complex. Because current games were made for buttons, skill is based on pressing the right button at the right time (so there are few possible actions, but you have strict conditions on how to use them). Kinect games allow for many more actions (all the body motions you can imagine), but will have to be much more tolerant on the timing (because of the measurement precision, and also because most gamers are not professional dancers).
So for example in a fighting game (a genre I like
), the gameplay shall not be based on frame priority, but on move quality. The better your motion / balance / posture, the more damage it will cause.
I also think that there are many genres to be created, but not based on controlling a character (it may not please most of gamers today who ask for "immersion" in games, but that's not all there is to it). Actually kinect is not really suited for many games of that type, especially because 1:1 reading cannot reproduce the walking/running task conveniently. So there is probably something to do based on "moving objects around" rather than "controlling the gestures of a character".
The other strength of kinect (being always available) can be used for games too. Because it is always there, you can "hop in" and "hop out" at any time, which will make it much more comfortable for short game sessions and killing time. Today's equivalent would be an old crossword magazine lingering in your living room, that you can grab for a few minutes (or hours), and leave to be finished later. You could do a crosswords videogame, but nobody would want to grab a remote controller, power up a console, launch the game... unless they intend to "play" for at least 30 minutes.
So that's my immediate ideas. Of course few of them would really revolutionize gaming as we know it, but I would say that it is precisely the point. Microsoft doesn't (or shouldn't) target kinect at making "hardcore" games better. It is more about getting a seamless link between the user and the machine, so the console (and its software, services,...) is a permanent part of the environment.
DangerousDave said:
But you assume that Kinect is a whole NEW controller. But in reality is an evolution of EyeToy. Yeah, it's more precise, it detects 3D, but it's not like inventing the mouse. It's more like inventing the mousewheel, or a more precise mouse.
No, because kinect doesn't make "the same thing as eyetoy, only better", it provides new information. The eyetoy never provided a body analysis. You were controlling the games through your image, not your body. It may sound a technicality, but it changes a lot on the concept and the possibilities. There is a difference between a commande based on "move something in this part of the screen" and "raise your left hand and bend your right knee" (which, now that I think about it, wouldn't even require you to look at the screen, which is also a strong point).
In theory eyetoy could do gesture analysis, only it would require complex algorithms, lots of processing power, would easily be disturbed by environmental conditions. And it would very probably require frequent calibration (like in that PS3 beat'em all game) and constraints on the environment (like "one person at a time in the field of view, please"), which is getting against the "always available" concept. So if you consider what eyetoy could do in the near future, you could say that the kinect features are an evolution of it, except that kinect does it first and does it better.