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First of all, before going any further, I have to confess that I do not own a Kinect. I did, however, spend some time with a demo unit in a “non-sterile” environment and came away rather impressed. For a casual gaming platform, I’m beginning to understand what Microsoft is trying to do.
A lot of the features that excite me about Kinect, such as navigating a Netflix queue with the device, are simply not supported yet. I did manage to test out a few basic dashboard operations and Kinect Sports.
Calibrating the sensor wasn’t as much trouble as I thought it was going to be, and I had someone attempt to mess with the sensor by walking back and forth directly behind me (the sensor, surprisingly, wasn’t fooled – this makes the device more suitable for party settings than I had originally anticipated). Navigating menus was a bit clumsier than I expected, as there is slight motion lag with the device. As far as accuracy, waving my hand around the screen appeared to provide the same “feeling” as a Wiimote – without the Wiimote itself. In other words, although the device was a bit slow, I had little trouble getting where I wanted to go.
Of the minigames in Kinect Sports that I spent time with, the most accessible is bowling. Again, immediately, comparisons to the Wii are inevitable here. The Kinect provides a more accurate “feel” of bowling, but during my time with the game I did have a difficult time getting the ball to go “exactly” where I was expecting it to. For a casual game of bowling, though, it definitely improves on the experience provided by games like WiiSports.
Based on my time with the device, Microsoft certainly won’t have any problem making this a must-have item for the holiday season. Interestingly enough, out of the three configurations (two console bundles and a stand-alone sensor), the only one sold out in my area is the stand-alone sensor, implying that lots of existing 360 owners took the plunge. However, that sample size is admittedly small.
Looking into the future past Black Friday, I see:
Little Girl [to parents]: Oooh! I want the kitty game! Can I have the kitty game?
Little Boy [to parents]: Oooh! I want the game with Sonic on it! He’s on a hoverboard! COOL!
Mother [to father]: Oooh! A fitness game! I can finally burn off that extra belly fat!
Father: [to the clerk] This works with our Wii, right?
