Around the web there is a new gaming movement , the sofa party movement , made up of gaming traditionalists , proudly hoisting their "Do not tread ...at all" and "We will not be moved or kinected " placards , and spreading extreme core gaming fear and insanity with every review .
The Kinect as one motion gaming and Diwali dancing Nobel Laureate might say is getting a shellacking in reviews , but look closer and you will see that most of these reviews are by people who are not the target audience , can't do lycra , and or are reviewers faced with 7 days of time to learn motor skills they managed to do without since birth..The same reviewers who initially had soooo many problems playing Nintendo Wii games .... remember?
Read reviews where the target audience is involved and it is a different story , kids in love with Kinectimals , fitness addicts remodelling their homes in anticipation , and the general casual public who will give a Sonics whisker about lag , gameplay , depth , when the point of the thing is to have fun , and in a group.
Kinect is a new form factor , it will require a new set of skills quite different to what has gone before , and many core gamer egos are about to implode as 30 years of carefully honed skillz are shuryiukened. Kinect doesn't just mean a change in the shape of gaming it also means a change in the shape of gamers ! Girls ,kids ,energetic fitness types , and inevitably the odd household pet will all be displaying ninja gaming skills leaving core gamers to retreat to the safety of their plush cushioned sofas...
With Kinect the big Redmond M has wisened up to the power of the casual gamer , and the saturation of the core market , I mean what do you buy after Halo Reach, Call of Duty Black Ops , and GT5 are over ? This year it will be Kinect and its casual tsunami of games that will outsell all these AAA franchises..
Really nobody buying into Kinect expects the games to outdo AAA traditional franchises , what they are buying into is change, and this change is much needed in an industry currently locked into falling annual sales of annual sequels of so called AAA core games , without this change , and the change that iOS ,Android,and Facebook have caused ,we could predict next years entire line up of games , Call Of Duty Yawn , Halo Yawn Yawn , Metal Gear SnooZe, Super Mario Rerererelease and of course GTA Yo' Money .... etc ...etc....all with 2/3rds of the game not on the disk and to be bought at additional cost as DLC! with zombies!
So when 5 million Kinects sell by the end of the year , maybe coders will be forced to move video game design away from the stagnant predictable and ultimately doomed state it has become.
When this happens they should remember that we bought into Kinect
because we are so bored out of our minds with the limited edition , gimped game dlc purchase obligating , virtually identical to last years model of what they think are core games .
If you missed the riff read about a certain historical shellacking given to the Brits here... wow they even had cos play in those days!
CHOICES ARE
