So, in more gaming news over the past few days, Microsoft announced that they were ending sales of the Kinect accessory and, I can only presume, no more game software will be released that supports, or at least none that will absolutely require, the device.
I’d say, about time. While the Kinect in principle isn’t bad, and it was one of the first devices to introduce voice commands in the home, its actual execution just wasn’t right.
The Kinect came as a side effect of the massive sales of the Nintendo Wii in the late 2000’s, a system which sold heavily to families and “casual” gamers, and relied heavily on the motion controls it used as a gimmick to sell the system – most Wii’s I ever saw in homes were literally gathering dust, hooked up to some fancy HDTV, rather than actually played. Still, the system sold, regardless of how often people played it.
The original Xbox 360 Kinect.
Both Microsoft and Sony wanted in on this, and in the case of Microsoft, they developed a body motion tracking camera system that also had voice controls for the Xbox Console and Windows PC’s using a special “for Windows” version of the hardware. I’m not sure fully just how this was used, but for the Xbox 360 and later the Xbox One, it was used mainly for both full body interactive gameplay as operating the console via hand motions and the aforementioned voice controls.
In principle, it was a fine accessory – I was able to snag a Kinect for 360 dirt cheap recently and toyed around with it in the user menus of the console, which proved rewarding. I don’t have the space at the time to test any Kinect games, although I do own a few, so I can’t comment firsthand on that, but I do know I’ve seen many, many reviews, both written, and in video form, and varying demonstrations of the Kinect in action on both the Xbox 360 and the Xbox One to know this much: It wasn’t that great.
Honestly, I don’t think much of motion controls, up to and including virtual reality systems, mixed with gaming. While a neat curiosity, such always seems to be more trouble than its worth and are rarely are implemented well. When they do work out, it can be a fun time, but it gets old (and usually tiring) quite quickly. Fun can be had, certainly, but it’s not an experience I think most people want in their gaming – especially not over a long time frame.
While the side features, like voice commands, are useful, they aren’t enough to justify the price of the device in the time it was in stores, the Kinect stayed around the $100 price point for most of its life on both systems – that cost added into any console bundle that included the accessory. An extra $100 to be able to move around while playing a game? I’m surprised it sold as well as it did.
Of course, all this comes from a man who spent his late teens and 20’s playing an incredible amount of Dance Dance Revolution and Pump it Up, but those were games I played because I wanted to get up and move, and even the home versions with pads were cheaper than this accessory alone, and the games actually played, with definite action. They just plain worked, unlike this thing.
The Xbox One Kinect. Improved, but that still doesn’t change how most people just don’t want to game that way.
The Kinect was at its core a device to tap into the motion control craze of the post-Wii era, and that’s it. Microsoft tried to make it more than that (even originally making it a required purchase with the Xbox One console) but in the end, all it ever was really was a way to tap into the market the Wii had already claimed, a market that was in a way dead on arrival as again, most people never actually cared for motion controls beyond the initial “wow” factor. Trying to force it onto the Xbox One as some sort of required device was just insane.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. What I hate is that the technology itself is quite impressive (and worth reading up on.) The actual camera systems and the way it tracks body motion, in both its forms, really was well thought out, but in practice it just didn’t always work as it should (Read, Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor on the Xbox 360) and at its core, motion controls always were, and probably always will be, a gimmick on a whole, suited to one off specialty situations, and not the focus of game consoles or major hardware purchases.