The stupid thing starts prompting me to update it, and it
won’t let me progress until I do so. So what do you do? You update it, and sit
there waiting for it to download and install. A few boring minutes later and it’s
done. Fantastic. Now what?
A new dashboard, cool. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to
new versions of stuff, every time I update my iTunes I’m jumping up and down
gleefully waiting to see what new changes they’ve made to my lovely little neat
media player. Of course when I load up iTunes afterwards, I find that nothing
has changed and I’d just wasted five minutes of my life watching a status bar
move from left to right. And it’s much the same with the Xbox.
It’s all kind of changed without really being different. All
the menus are still there and the submenus are now white instead, making it
look like Apple. I’m sure that’s just a coincidence. Oh, and for some unknown
reason my avatar has grown about two feet and looks like a ganglier version of
Robert Pattinson with blonde hair. Why is this? And then it dawned on me.
How could I forget! Project Natal, now known as Kinect. Not Connect, that’s just not pretentious enough, Kinect, as in kinetic + connect. Do you see what they did there?
Yes, Kinect. If you don’t know what this is, in short it’s
Microsoft’s answer to Nintendo’s Wii. Since the Wii landed on shelves back in
late 2006 the thing has taken over the world one living room at a time. Back
then they were mocked by the whole world about their lack of ‘real’ controller
and well, the name obviously. “Wii? What kind of a name is that? It‘ll never
take off.” 70 million units later and suddenly people aren’t so eager to make
jokes. Especially their rivals.
Fed up of watching Nintendo run away with all the tasty
casual gaming pie, Microsoft and Sony decided they wanted a piece. Sony brought
out the Playstation Move which is already available for purchase at around
fifty quid. It’s basically two Wii remotes with glowing balls on the end of
them. It hasn’t taken off in massive numbers really but at least they have
something now that can stand against the Wii that isn’t the laughable six-axis.
Their launch line up is so so weak though so it’s really hard to gauge how they
will do in the long run.
Microsoft’s answer to the little white box came back in
2009, on my birthday in fact, at E3 when they revealed to everyone Project
Natal, a brand new system that would allow you to play games without a controller.
You lucky swines, you!
They showed a few games, and some weird imaginary friend
called Milo, who you could interact with and ask him questions about his
homework and such. It was all very creepy. He has since been put down due to
obvious limitations, apparently that game was just a demo, they could have made
it if they wanted to. Honest. If only they’d do the same with that bloody
annoying little paper-clip henchman on Microsoft Word! Poor Milo.
Anyway, yes the games! Well as you would probably guess they
all reek a little of Wii Sports. You know, just the basic mini-game scenario
where you wave your arms around and look like a confused gorilla on cocaine all
in the name of mild, casual entertainment. So yes, pretty pointless. In terms
of real games, there aren’t any, just casual ones. Hooray for casuals.
It’s not just for gaming though. You can scroll through
menus using only your hands which would be annoying if you’re trying to be
precise. There’s voice chat with your friends, presuming you have some, which
is just Skype isn’t it? And it has voice recognition by the looks of it.
Naturally though, the more hardcore gamers out there haven’t
exactly welcomed Kinect with open arms. Which is fair enough, they didn’t
invest in the Xbox to jump around like a berk. If they’d wanted to do that,
they’d have bought a Wii. But this is business and Microsoft like monies so
they are going with it and that’s that.
Some problems have been reported about it. Most notably the
thing struggles to pick up dark clothing and yes, dark skin. Which just opens
up that horrible smelly kettle of fish. For crying out loud Microsoft aren’t
racist! It’s a simple case of a camera struggling to pick up dark colours.
Seriously the amount of idiots spouting out on the internet about the Kinect
being racist is ridiculous! More ridiculous than the ones going on about
Obama’s ‘Republicans should sit in the back of the car’ comment. He said car
not bus, you morons!
It’s deemed unresponsive at times, just as the Wii is. So it
shouldn’t be hampered by that too much. It first claimed to pick up all digits
on your hand, but that’s no longer the case. Now it just picks up basic
movement. Some game genres have been regarded by many as pointless for Kinect.
Racing games for example: holding your hands out onto an imaginary wheel? It’s
hardly Mario Kart Wii now is it.
I personally think Kinect is an okay thing to be brought out
into the market, but I don’t really see the point to it to be honest. Isn’t
this thing just an EyeToy? Remember that device that Sony brought out for the
PS2? That was a bit of a failure for them so what makes this different? Kinect
costs a lot more and it does pretty much the same thing as the EyeToy, except
it’s had a few bells and whistles thrown onto it. I just can’t see this thing
succeeding as most of the casual gamers they’re after already have a Wii. So
are they willing to pay the money for an Xbox 360 and Kinect? Probably not
considering the Wii already has a catalogue of games to draw upon and these
games will be of a better quality. Well not all of them, the Wii certainly has
it’s fair share of shovel-ware. Carnival Games anyone?
Also, how is this thing going to work? What happens if you
sneeze? Does your character sneeze? That won't be great when you’re desperately
trying to pop on on-screen balloon now will it? What if you’re playing two
player and you step in front of your opponent in real life? Even worse what if
your dog walks in? I take it the thing just explodes at the prospect of it.
Even if you are a ‘casual gamer’ though, or you have kids,
and you’re thinking of getting a console you‘re still most likely to choose the
Wii. With two games and the motion plus, the Wii costs around £160; whereas
Xbox with Kinect and a game is £250-£300 depending on what hard-drive you go
for. Not really a contest is it? Okay if you have kids then you could use the
Xbox for the more ‘hardcore’ games, while your kids could use Kinect for
theirs, that would be a viable option I suppose.
I think this is the market they’re trying to tap into,
judging by their marketing at least. They have straight-up just copied
Nintendo’s advertising plan. You know, take a family of four: a mum, a dad, a
son, and a daughter. Put them in an overly large living room. Make them jump
around and pretend to have lots of fun doing so. Fantastic. But hey, Nintendo
sold 70 million of the little wonders, so don’t knock it. It clearly works.
As for Sony’s marketing of the Move, it hasn’t really
existed in comparison to the Kinect’s. It was released to the public without
any real hoo-hah. Perhaps they were put off since the PS3 launch; they didn’t
have any more HDTVs to give away for free, so they pretty much walked into the
shop, put it on the shelf, pointed to it and said: “there it is.” I wouldn’t
really expect Microsoft to do the same. Kinect launches in the UK on 10th
November, and I’d expect them to be in every major shopping centre and high
street strutting their stuff. I feel for their employees. They are going to
look slightly stupid.
All in all the Kinect looks… okay. As for a Wii killer I
don’t think it’s going to take much of their pie. The real threat to the Wii is
realistically the Move. It’s easier to integrate into games, unlike the Kinect.
It’s apparently very accurate, unlike the Kinect. It has a controller, unlike
the Kinect. All it needs are a few more useful games and it has a chance of
getting a larger slice than Microsoft.
The Kinect is just a novelty, a gimmick. It’s just a
glorified EyeToy with a multi million-dollar marketing budget. Now, how do I
get my avatar to stop looking like a gimp?
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