Having skipped the Mobile Kinect demonstration during San Francisco's Fleet Week, today was the my first opportunity to try out Kinect on launch day.
Few bits of information for the GS in San Francisco's Financial District; the girl who was working (and did the midnight release last night) said about 12 people showed up for the midnight pick up, several of which bought more than one. According to her, this was a pretty decent midnight release for that particular store.
Pre-orders were between 30-40, many of which bought more than one unit. Initial shipment, the majority of which were pre-orders, were gone before noon, with more expected at an undetermined date. Basically they get stock when they get stock.
They had a kiosk roped off at the street side display window to demo Kinect which was playing Kinect Adventures.
There were customers interested in what Kinect was about, and in the 20-30 minutes I was in the store (I was able to immediately demo it as there was no line) a little girl tried it out, two men in their late 20's early 30's tried it out briefly and one woman in her early 30's tried it. One woman in her mid 20's with a prosumer camcorder and professional tripod was leaving as I entered the store who I'm assuming was doing a new story or video blog on Kinect.
I played riccochet with the clerk who was running the demo kiosk and he mentioned the input lag as he explained how the interface worked, which was noticeable even on the menu screen. It was pretty apparent during actual game play, but once you get used to it, you just do your movements a split second earlier and wait for your avatar to catch up. The software does a solid job of matching avatar movement and poses to the player; it just takes a split second to register and display.
After riccochet, I played "plug the leaks in the glass window" for the lack of a better description. Yes, it's ridiculously simple and it's a lot like playing Twister. Despite the simplicity (it's a party activity) it's still fun although it would get old fast if playing it at home for more than ten minutes. Kinect Adventures is pretty much just that; a party game that probably won't hold the interest of most for extended periods of time. Player swapping and activity swapping is what keeps this one fresh.
In general, Kinect looks like fun and it's kind of fun to watch since people have fun while playing. The lag is very noticeable and unless that can be worked out through coding, it will limit what types of games can be played with Kinect. Anything requiring fast twitch reflexes is kind of out unless game play is set up to allow players to see the visual cues they have to react to before the game code registers player input.
The software player and limb tracking is solid though even though it helps if players are deliberate in their movment. I'd like to see more at any rate, particularly more games that use marionette type 1:1 avatar control.
Last impression; the "game play photo" feature pretty much confirms what everyone already knew: yes, you look like an idiot while playing. So, thank you Kinect for reminding us.
