I’ve been reading articles left and right about Kinect’s “shortcomings.” While I feel that it has shortcomings I’m not going to harp on it because I see it for what it was meant to be: a gimmick to top that of the Wii, or in other words a business plan to increase sales. The life-cyle of the Xbox 360 is on the decline and this is an attempt to bring in a bigger audience and garner fresh sales. Now all the buzz it got only a year ago has turned to skepticism: It only supports 2 players, it showed some lag on Jimmy Kimmel, and now a report that analyzes all of the shortcomings before the product even hits shelves and predicts it flopping.

None of these new motion control systems are without fault. In fact the ones we have now aren’t all that great. What we will have by the end of 2010 is a gimmick war that doesn’t show a whole lot of promise for the game industry.

The Wii- It’s far from new, but it deserves mention first because it birthed this whole notion of needing some kind of motion controller to play games. The Wii’s controls were under-utilized though. How many games have you played for the Wii that really seemed to utilize the control method effectively? One of the best examples I can think of is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, and it worked brilliantly in that. Then it gradually turned into an exercise machine and it seemed like motion controls were just turned into a point and click deal.

Playstation Move- Five years after the Wii set it up, the folks at Sony watched it “evolve” and took it for themselves. The reason why move looks more impressive than what Nintendo has is because they have had five years to see what worked and what didn’t with Nintendo and improve upon it. Another advantage they have is that they get fluid 1:1 motion without making you buy a an attachment in something that looks like a controller condom. The motions aren’t pre-rendered either which shows that they are at least trying to expand on the concept.

Kinect- Microsoft’s controller-less add-on for the 360 that looks to be everything you need for social media, but not video games. It will stream ESPN and you can also video chat with it, but in terms of gaming you can play all of the party games that Nintendo or Sony wouldn’t take. We have all heard the doomsaying I alluded to earlier. It is the Xbox’s attempt to cater to the Wii crowd and it seems that they are trying to do that through XBLA and party games. When analysts predict failure it seems that you might need to play all your cards or start bluffing to save face.

Where Microsoft and Sony fail is that they are simply cloning Nintendo’s strategy instead of trying to expand upon it. I like a few party games every once and a while, but not when they are the majority of games on the shelf whenever I’m browsing. If Sony and Microsoft want to get people excited for their new products then raise the bar instead of keeping it level.

When it comes to choosing between the three of them then my honest recommendation would be the Playstation Move. It may just be the fulfillment of promises Nintendo made years ago, but it is better late than never. At least they have shown how it can work with fps and racing games. So as far as promise goes Sony has more. Nintendo had their chance and went more casual friendly, which is fine, and Microsoft has gone towards that end as well only commenting that they would like to see an FPS on Kinect. I will take guarantees over like to’s.

-Cody Toothman

Tags: control, controller, gimmick, Kinect, microsoft, motion, Move, nintendo, Playstation, Sony, Wii, Xbox 360

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.