Kinect's Lag Forgivable - It's a Holiday Hit!

If you read one sentence today about Kinect for the Xbox 360, make it this one: Microsoft's version of motion control is simple to use and play, but is hamstrung by gameplay oddities and limitations, slight inaccuracies, and space requirements.

This is Kinect in a nutshell.  It looks revolutionary, it's small and svelte, and for good or bad it performs exactly as you'd expect from a Microsoft product.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would describe most Microsoft products thusly:  "Good try, we'll see you after Service Pack 2 when you're actually done, not just 'sellable'."

The games for Kinect are exceedingly simple because they have to be.  During my time with Kinect on a few different games, the motion tracking was good, but not "great", like it is with Sony's Move controller, or the Wii Motion Plus.  Since the camera system is the input device, the games that I saw didn't require precise timing, and used larger sweeping motions to perform on-screen actions. 

You definitely look silly using the Kinect controller; in fact, you move like something out of a zombie flick playing with Kinect.  From the odd shuffling side-to-side, to the waving, to pushing arm motions, you're just an armageddon away from looking completely natural.  Even with these movements being "minimal", players will need a good 6-8 feet of unimpeded space around them to play Kinect games.  Most Kinect games aren't the "sit on your couch" variety, they're the "temporarily rearrange your entire stupid living room" variety.  Two player games definitely require gamers to be familiar with the phrase "oops, sorry, didn't mean that," if they're playing too close to one another, which is a concern for apartment dwellers. 

I played several games with Kinect, including a remake of Rootbeer Tapper  (part of a mini game collection) and "Decca Sports", a mini-game collection made by Hudson Soft (generally, a high quality game producer that publishes their games through Konami).  I was especially interested in third party games for Kinect. Third party support is what makes or breaks a console (or a high-ambition peripheral like Kinect).  It also shows how far along Kinect is in terms of support Microsoft is giving their third parties.

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