Reasonable said:
heruamon said:
Reasonable said:
I kind of agree - but the deal breaker for me is that it's not mandatory. When I thought about it I understood why we saw the articles a while back about the senior Xbox guy who said it had to be mandatory. I do see that the fact it changes the interface, etc. makes it more than a peripheral, but... it's optional. MS haven't made it the interface, more of an optional if you want to try this. And therefore in overall concept the way they are selling it is closer to a peripheral.
Obviously the challenge for MS is that to go mandatory would split the install base. But, that's the issue with launching it like an add-on peripheral rather than, as Nintendo did with the Wii, commiting fully to a different input interface and approach.
I feel MS are trying to play clever with the device, using it both as a peripheral to get into motion controls/casual but also as a test bed for going with it fully next time.
If MS allowed people to use 360s without it, but from this point on put Kinect in ever 360 bundle - i.e. all new owners would get it, then I'd see it as a console re-launch. But right now MS are definately sitting on the fence, going 100% with the positioning with their marketing but not 100% in reality.
Note: hopefully my last posts clarify for the other couple of replys the disparity in my seeing the initial sales and launch as a great success for Kinect as a peripheral bringing motion control gaming but I'm not buying the console re-lauch fully due to the mixed approach and signs that more standalone Kinect's are selling than bundles going by the figures here.
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Aaaah…but in a stealth way, Kinect is NOT optional. The whole thing of it is that if you, the consumer, makes the choice to experience motion control, either on the dashboard, or in games, you must commit to Kinect. If the Kinect gave you choice of how you wanted to control the game, I’d agree with the non-mandatory statement, but I don’t think we will see many dual control titles. If you don’t buy into the full motion hype, then it is no different from those who did for the Wii, but if you do, then you MUST have Kinect. Anyway, maybe it is splitting hairs, but I think M$ is going to hold a lot of developer’s feet to the fire on providing full body control, which will make for many games to be exclusives to Kinect. You will of course have many who won’t, like EA Active 2 or Children of Eden (Both of which looks to be FAR more interesting with Kinect/Move, then without them), but chances are, M$ will have more exclusive titles thru Kinect, then it could have ever had without it, and that is one of the strongest reasons to push this closer to a console launch, than a peripheral.
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I think we agree on their strategy being to stealth get the concept bedded in, we're just using different terminology. Obviously if you go with Kinect then you're in that camp. My point on optional is that MS, so far, aren't saying everyone who wants to use a 360 also has to join the Kinect camp.
This in direct comparison to Wii where you could buy one and barely touch motion control titles if you wanted to, but you'd still need to use the pointer, etc. for the menus.
I do think MS will put a push on titles. In a sense, they have to. Without a lot more titles Kinect will almost certainly become like the Wii balance board - a very successful peripheral used for a fairly small set of titles.
So I'm definately expecting MS to push the library strongly. I suspect they're going to rely on third parties to keep the existing core happy with new CoD, Fallout, Halo titles while focusing a lot of their energy on Kinect titles strategically.
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