Kinect Is Not For You

[Susan Arendt]

Although I don't own a current generation console, I'm pretty sure the Wii has made it clear this sort of controllers doesn't work with "hardcore" games, silly remote or not. I really don't think anyone feels (or should feel) betrayed by this, especially with if it makes such real business sense.

I disagree, somewhat. I think the Wii Remote has been poorly integrated into the few core games that have tried to make it work, but that doesn't mean that motion controls and core games will never mix. As with so many things, it's all a matter of proper execution. One thing I saw during a Sony presentation of Move gave me hope - the designers recognized that players don't want to use nothing but motion controls for an entire game, so they're trying to figure out ways to blend motion controls with more traditional controls. You use a controller for the game and perhaps use the motion controls to navigate a map, for example.

I think that the real depth of motion control has yet to be explored. What we've seen so far are a few ham-fisted efforts.

 

[geizr]

Personally, I am skeptical of the potential success of the Kinect based on the past history of add-on peripherals(noted exceptions being rhythm games such as Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Dance Dance Revolution). However, some of you all have some really insular, self-important opinions regarding gamers, games, and the games market(and I include the author of this article in that criticism).

From the view of any game company, games and gaming is a business, nothing more and nothing less, and as a business the goal is to make money and remain profitable. Has it ever occurred to some of you all that the reason companies are so keen lately to consider the ocean of casual gaming is because maintaining profitability in the lake of "core/hardcore" gaming is becoming untenable? That maybe the so-called cadre of "core" gamers just don't provide as much financial support as they think they do to continue carrying the game industry? The result being that game companies have to start looking for new markets and ideas to remain profitable. These massive, epic AAA blockbuster titles that you all love so much cost substantial amounts of investment to create, and, let's face it, many of them are every bit as much half-baked shovel-ware as some of the "casual" games some of you decry, only ridiculously more expensive. Even if the game is remarkably good, it may still run into difficulty recouping the investment costs due to insufficient sales because people have only a finite amount of time and money to invest in these kinds of games. Even further, if you go by the attentions of the gaming press, only the same handful of AAA titles ever sell in significant numbers, which mean only the same few game companies reap any potential profit while the others languish in losses. Little wonder why game companies keep just making the same thing over and over when the only thing "core" gamers are willing to buy is the same thing, over and over; they do this to mitigate the risk of loss that comes from making these expensive titles.

At the end of the day, game companies have no choice but to start looking outside the "core" gamer market in order to remain profitable. It's a necessary business decision. Granted, I think this particular decision on Microsoft's part is not so well-thought out and will not garner them as much market and profitability as they may be expecting or hoping for, but the fact is the gaming industry can no longer pay singular attention to one single class of gamer. To remain profitable and continue to grow and innovate, the game industry must reach beyond this so-called "core" gamer market space. Face it guys, this is no longer the period of 1995-2002, when the "core" gamer was king. There are new market realities which have shifted your position of importance.

 

[Callate]

That a company hoping to snare a portion of the Wii's consumer base is planning on aiming their advertising at, well, Wii's consumer base, is not exactly news. What I do find curious is that for all Kinect has been touted as a "think bigger/ push the envelope/this changes everything" product, the marketing campaign would be relatively mundane and predictable.

On at least one level, the People Who Play Games and Core Gamer demographics would like to see the same thing from the Kinect: that is, "something we haven't seen before". We have games that make the player move around, games that allow the player to interact with cute animals, games that simulate sports that we could actually go outside and play if we could be bothered to leave our living rooms. For all that Molyneaux has a reputation for pushing more than he can deliver, "Milo" is one of the few demos big M has offered up that actually seemed to be promising something new.

My suspicion is that the areas where Kinect retreads old ground are the areas where it is most going to fail. Imprecise and confusing control systems for familiar game types are bound to frustrate Game-Players and Core Gamers alike, leading to disasterous expressions of "this is so much simpler with one of the control systems I'm used to" (or, worse, "I liked this better on the Wii.") Not being a Core Gamer in this day and age doesn't equate with not having preferences on how one accesses one's electronic experiences- I'm sure plenty of "non-gamers" have cel phones and computers, and strong feelings about which application interfaces favor their style.

In short, MS' Kinect campaign will not prosper or flounder based largely on its ability to portray itself as "Wii 2.0" with most demogaphics. It will succeed, or fail, based on the degree to which it can convince buyers that this technology will be fun and different and, yes, genuinely new.

 

[Veldt Falsetto]

Give it time, eventually Kinect will have some Core games, then the core audience can complain about those.

After all, Nintendo went after that casual market at first, and they got really, really successful. Now that they have a big audience and everything, they're moving back to the core gamers with a crapload of amazing looking games geared for the "hardcore" crowd.

And besides. Microsoft is a business, they'll market to where the money's at. And right now the money's with all the casual gamers.

Not eally we were told that we'd get Zelda, Mario Metroid etc.. but for Kinect they haven't announced anything to look foward to. They should lower the price to $100 add an internet browser and advertise it as a way to explore th internet watch videos etc.. without a controller. There is no way to make a core game with that thing unless you'd enjoy being guided around a path.

Exactly my feelings.
The Wii and even Move are different to Kinect in the fact that it actually has a controller, unless they come up with a way to actually move in a game without a controller the only good games on the system will be rail shooters, racing games or games that move for you and I'd have more fun on a normal console with those types of games, unless Kinect shows something really interesting, it's just a piece of potentially impressive hardware.

 

[Generic_Dave]

I dunno. It's $300 dollars for the new slim 360 and Kinect...I really think they need to get it in core gamers homes, and then let it spread by word of mouth. It doesn't seem like Kinect is going to be easy to "showcase" in stores, the pick up seems a bit iffy in large spaces and the body scan (assuming you can't just jump in without it) would necessarily slow it down compared with Wii's pick up and play.

Core gamers are early adopters of new tech, I mean the Wii might have sold huge numbers to the casual market over its life. But all the buzz and pre-orders when it first came out was from the core market. I stood in a line with maybe 500 other people (one of several stores in the area with comparable queues) on Wii release day. I can't see the same thing happening with Kinect. At the $150 for Kinect you might not pick it up for yourself, but you might get it as a sly present for your girlfriend with Dance Central, but are people who this is aimed at (the majority of whom on shelled out a bit south of 200 bucks in the past couple of years for a Wii really going to want to pay another $300?

While I appreciate Microsoft's marketing stance, and I see the logic behind. I also think the logic is flawed. As the article mentions most "non-gamers" don't go looking for news about new games and Microsoft could easily do more to convince the core market that the Kinect can be used for their games without scaring off the casual market. While the push has to be to get those new clients to come to X-box, the overall life or death of the product will be on it's players base. If you don't have enough players, games will not get made, or they will be lousy ports on the cheap. And if you haven't got the games you won't sell the units. Right now Microsoft has a captive audience of somewhere in the 30-45 million range, and if it could convince even a quarter of those to grab a Kinect in the first year or so I'd say it's set. But most of these captive consumers don't see what good Kinect is to them, with the possible exception of Dance Central.

 

[Sebenko]

Do you remember when the 360 first came out and Microsoft started ignoring PC gamers?

Well now it's doing the same thing with "core" gamers.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

First-Person Marketer: Kinect Is Not For You

Why Microsoft's marketing plan ignores core gamers: Microsoft needs to market its Kinect so that it's perceived as the one thing to get this holiday season.

Read Full Article

There's a couple of formatting issues with page 2 - there are a few proper names that are clearly intended to display in italics, as evinced by a set of brackets containing "i" and "/i" on either side of those words, and were those posted on the forum they would be italicized as intended. BBCode doesn't work on the main website though, you need to use HTML markup - in this case the markup is pretty much the same, you just need to use use to enclose the i and /i instead of [ ].

 

[Continuity]

Yeah, well the other reason apart from growth potential is that these woolly motion controllers just don't give the accurate or fast control that a "core gamer" as your put it is used to and wants. These products were never going to be for "core gamers" and never will be.

 

[Jfswift]

I want to say they'll both do well and personally, I'm excited that both the Xbox 360 and PS3 will be getting their own motion sensing controller but they're just too expensive.

 

[jebbo]

Has anyone put any thought into the idea that the recent titbits of information concerning the future Windows 8 allude to its use of motion/gesture based controls in much the same way 7 is supposedly geared towards touch?

What a way to get millions of people around the world controlling a Microsoft product and software with gesture based controls before a new OS. I can already see the adverts - you can do such and such just like you can with Kinect...

 

[The Random One]

The way I see it what happened was this:

- Nintendo releases its console targeting non-gamers. Sales skyrocked for the firt few months.
- Microsoft (and Sony - in fact, mentally add (and Sony) to every mention of Microsoft in this post, and (and Move) to every mention of Kinect for utmost realism) realized they were giving up a huge, unexplored market. Their execs turned into cartoons with big red faces and smoke coming out of their ears and told the devs to create something like the Wii.
- A few years later, the Wii turned out to not have been as good an idea as it first seemed. It had sold well and gained a nice market, but this new market didn't behave like gamers usually do. They didn't buy a new game every few months and couldn't give a flying crap about latest releases. In fact, most of them had only one or two games and didn't want to buy more.
- Execs realized that the Kinect was not going to work as well as they had hoped if bundled with the console, and the converted demographic wasn't the holy marketing grail they had thought it was. But by that time the Kinect was already far into the development schedule, so it's better to market it aggressively and hope it'll recoup costs than to just up and abandon a project that's eaten a few million dollars and is halfway complete.
- Execs hire Cirque du Soleil.

... And the rest is history.

 

[drayk]

A mate of mine is really looking forward to Kinect and I really can't see why. Aside from it's motion controlled user interface, nothing about it is worth it. Had it been cheaper, I'd think about getting it for that use alone, but it's current game line up doesn't interest me (or my mate for that matter, though he still wants it) and any games that either of us play would be much worse off if made for Kinect.

Even when it was first announced, all I ever saw was Microsoft trying to crack into Nintendos market, which is fine, but just never saw any use for the device outside of its targeted demo of casual players. Time will tell if my thoughts on it are proved wrong and it does end up having success with serious video game players, but I really don't see that happening.

 

[Blobpie]

A kinect RTS would be interesting... WHICH THEY PROBABLY WON'T MAKE!!!!! (well at least the way things are going right now)

 

[Icehearted]

It's no dumber than the Avatar marketplace, but that's apparently done pretty well for itself. Blobpie has a point, a RTS with this thing could be nifty, but instead they'd rather release virtual animals to slap around and virtual children to stalk us through our TVs.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

Snip

Microsoft's plan with Kinect is simple.

Copy and paste everything Nintendo did four years ago with the wii that got them the patented "Nintendo money throne."

Of course the Wii has jumped from that and know are trying to bank on it's players found childhood memories and attract back its hardcores with its new Metroid, Zelda, Kirby, Donkey Kong Country, and everything on the 3DS.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

The way I see it what happened was this:

- Nintendo releases its console targeting non-gamers. Sales skyrocked for the firt few months.
- Microsoft (and Sony - in fact, mentally add (and Sony) to every mention of Microsoft in this post, and (and Move) to every mention of Kinect for utmost realism) realized they were giving up a huge, unexplored market. Their execs turned into cartoons with big red faces and smoke coming out of their ears and told the devs to create something like the Wii.
- A few years later, the Wii turned out to not have been as good an idea as it first seemed. It had sold well and gained a nice market, but this new market didn't behave like gamers usually do. They didn't buy a new game every few months and couldn't give a flying crap about latest releases. In fact, most of them had only one or two games and didn't want to buy more.
- Execs realized that the Kinect was not going to work as well as they had hoped if bundled with the console, and the converted demographic wasn't the holy marketing grail they had thought it was. But by that time the Kinect was already far into the development schedule, so it's better to market it aggressively and hope it'll recoup costs than to just up and abandon a project that's eaten a few million dollars and is halfway complete.
- Execs hire Cirque du Soleil.

... And the rest is history.

Not quite yet, since Nintendo is being smart and knows that the only game people buy in mass is its first party titles. So, they are shoveling them out like nobodies buisness (I assume you have the Metroid: Other M on you add bars to right now). Not to mention the shift in focus from the wii to the upcoming 3DS.

 

[The_Emperor]

Nice article.
all you guys who own the xbox and feel "betrayed"...

it's not like they are going to stop making "core" games how can a company betray you by making more money which will inevitably lead to better, more numerous AAA games?

I think the reason I and other Xbox gamers feel "betrayed" is that MS already HAVE stopped making core games. If you look at the upcoming releases Sony have 5-6 times as many exclusive core titles as MS in 2010, go as far as 2011 and it's infinity times, MS have literally stopped making anything except for trashy minigame compilations and are making no efforts at all to secure third party titles. Even the bloody Wii has more core titles incoming in 2011 than the 360 has.

I do agree they have probably slowed down production of core titles, what I mean is, is spending all your time on core titles false economy? When eventually, after the megabucks roll in, they can spam loads of them and end up having more core titles over all?

thats if it succeeds.

I agree PS3 seems to be pumping out more exclusives atm. They dont have much to do than reverse engineer the wiimote though to make move

If it does take off and they start to ignore core gamers rather than pump up exclusive production I will buy a PS3 because that would be poor businessmanship on MS behalf. I don't want to have to buy a PS3 though 'cos I dont like the pads at all

 

[soapyshooter]

The hardware will sell, the games wont. Same with Wii.

 

[Iffat Nur]

Never thought of it that way.
Thanks for clearing it up