2011 line up ultimately all about Kinect? - Stephen McGill

[Alby_da_Wolf]

NotStan said:

AbbathTheGrim said:

From some time back I had the feeling that Micro wanted Kinect to be a hit so that they could have a platform with its own properties that could hardly be imitated by the other consoles. This way they would produce software that by its own nature would force exclusivity and would save them the trouble of buying time exclusives and so forth. I want Natal to be a hit so that this becomes Micro's focus, as motion has been Nintendo's.

I personally don't. The amount of shovelware games I've seen from Wii with the exceptional titles few and inbetween(This holiday season exception), if Kinect becomes the primary focus, the majority of investment that could have gone into securing first party studious such as 343 industries, Epic etc etc will instead go into forming studious primarily for Kinect, although I agree that by creating a new and innovative product they can now build their studios from ground up and invest alot less, but it would have been nice to see some more new first party IP's next year, fully exclusive, none of that "wait a year" crap.

But personal tastes and wishes apart, maybe this news means (as a side-effect or maybe because of it) that MS is abandoning its previous strategy of attacking the console in 3rd place and is switching to a more ambitious one of attacking the market leader. Obviously another side-effect would be that Sony and PC would gain more room in the hardcore segment. This latter side-effect is avoidable only if investments in hardcore development aren't reduced in any way and totally new funds, not subtracted from hardcore, are allocated for Kinect development. Obviously synergies are possible too, with Kinect use in hardcore games.

But wasn't all this largely predictable even before Kinect? Clear since MS chose to adopt rickety, big-headed avatars for the online community that look quite like Nintendo Miis?