World in Motion

So Microsoft have announced that the much anticipated Kinect will be sold for around 150 bucks. A little exchange rate research later and I guess it will around £100 over here, which in my opinion is £99 too much.

Let’s be honest, we are all bored of the Wii. Waving your arms about like you’re being attacked by a wasp just isn’t fun after four minutes, unless you’re Ant and Dec, which is always fun as long as you’re still getting paid.

With the Wii making so much money, Microsoft and Sony have jumped on the motion cash cow, and before Christmas motion controlled gaming will be available on all three consoles. Despite it’s popularity, the Wii has offered very little to hardcore gamers apart from the odd Zelda and Mario game, so it’s hard to get excited about Kinect and Move because they will only cater for the casual gamer.

The majority of the games announced for Kinect are aimed for children, so rather than an innovative piece of technology, it is more of a sound business plan from Microsoft, aimed at attracting a younger (and older) audience to the console. There is always one bastard developer though with delusions of grandeur, and they make a brilliant game that we must all have…the bastardy bastards. The big game from E3 was Child of Eden, and will be the reason (if any) for the hardcore gamers to buy Kinect, which they will.

The problem I have with the Wii, which I assume I will have with Kinect, is that the few good games available on the Wii would work just as well, if not better, without the motion controlled elements. I’m fine with pushing buttons, it’s less of a hindrance than waving my arms about, and with the Wii you end up pushing buttons anyway. You won’t have any buttons with Kinect, and whether this is a good thing depends on how well it works.

I understand that the whole movement aspect is great because it encourages the often obese gamer to exercise, but I have found a way to sit down and play games, and not get fat, or what I have dubbed, COD fit. All you need is a console, an exercise bike, and the ability to multitask. Or you can just play games and exercise separately.

Even if you don’t want to buy Kinect, Microsoft will manipulate you into buying it eventually. It’ll just be like downloadable content, fucking devious. In the good ol’ days you used to be able to buy a game, and then play it, seem simple enough. Now, you spend £40, and then you are continually sold extra parts of the game for the next year (at least). The latest Fifa game has 2 modes on the menu screen that you need to pay to unlock, didn’t I already pay to play it? Modern Warfare 2 has released 2 map packs so far, each costing around £10 each. You don’t have to buy these, but it makes it incredibly hard to play online without them as you are kicked out of any match that features a map you don’t have. So if you want to keep playing online you have to spend a total of around £60 on one game.

It has been announced that Fable III will use Kinect, but you won’t

need it to play the game. I get the feeling that a lot of games will have totally pointless special Kinect features that you don’t need, but in some way stop us from getting the whole experience of whatever game we’re playing. So it is inevitable that we will all buy Kinect even though we don’t want to, so how about lowering the price a little?