One thing that I've always been interested in was integrating movement into gameplay. When word of the Wii came, I was highly optimistic. Unfortunately the Wii's cumbersome sensors ended up being its' downfall for most gamers, actually requiring Nintendo to release a whole new addition to the remote to give it the accuracy that was expected at launch. Now we have two new contenders to the motion control arena, PlayStation's Move and Microsoft's Kinect. The Kinect uses a brand new system of interaction. It gives the game developers a daunting amount of input, from camera input, full body scans, to positional audio recordings. The question in my mind is how game developers will properly integrate all these features into a coherent gameplay experience?
Oh how I remember the Nintendo DS's launch. When it first came out, the best game for the LONGEST time was a simplistic line drawing game known as Kirby: Canvas Curse. It did as well as it could to keep the gameplay fresh, but at its core, really it was a simple game. The really unfortunate thing was at the time it was the only decent game for the DS. Most of the launch titles felt more like tech demos than full retail games, and guess what? Most of the good games that came out for the DS used the more normally laid out controller scheme using the d-pad and buttons. I'm not saying that there weren't noticeable exceptions, but when talking about the number of actual great games, there are a lot more titles that either used the gamepad layout or scaled the touch interaction back to the non-core gameplay experiences.
It is easy to develop menus and map systems using new inputs, as Microsoft showed us with their new menu system, but what about gameplay? I really felt as though it took the DS developers a good year or to "get it", in terms of using a touch interface for their gameplay. Sure Phantom Hourglass was a good game, but how long after launch did it take for Nintendo's mobile platform to properly propel their touchscreen as something that is actually viable to use?
Taking this into consideration, you also have to think about the Xbox 360 itself. The console has been going since 2005, and the Kinect is supposed to be coming out this November. With the 360 being 5 years old, it's getting harder and harder to develop good looking games for it. Considering the Kinect is going to be using up to 15 % of the Xbox's resources, will it really be able to deliver that compelling video game experience we have come to expect? Even with a rebranding, I can only see the 360 lasting another 3 years being Microsoft's flagship console. Is that long enough for game developers to properly integrate the Kinect into meaningful game experiences? With Milo being shelved to be some Fable mini-game, we can tell that this is going to be more difficult than what Microsoft will have you think.
How long can the 360 last? Will those 3-4 years be long enough for game developers to make a game that's good enough to convince everyone to buy a Kinect? The Move has the advantage of 4 years of Wii's game development on its' side. Let's hope that Microsoft knows what it is doing here. Who knows, maybe Microsoft is secretly making the next Halo multiplayer require Kinect so they can force it on the 360 market.
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