Yahtzee Croshaw said:
Extra Punctuation: On Kinect and PlayStation Move
Kinect and PlayStation Move aren't taking us towards the future of gaming, they're taking us away from it.
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The brain already has a built in way to disconnect motor control from thoughts, and brain commands. I don't imagine tripping this manually is really outside even our current reach. But direct to brain interfaces carry some scarey implications. Taking instructions from brainwaves is all fine and dandy but when the machine starts feeding back directly, bypassing the standard, ears, eyes, fingers methods, you get some uncharted territory of risk and worry that makes investors tremble. Don't get me wrong I long for the day I can put my little neckpiece on and dive into virtual space wholesale but I honestly think tech is the least of that things worries.
I'm not so naive or fanboyish not to see the kinect and move for what they are in essence. Plugs for some of nintendos market. But the tech is full of good uses, it's just a shame sony went right for the copy + lightbulb, and that Kinect commercials look like wii commercials(which are subliminaly IKEA commercials). While motion controls are not technically as quick for any single command they have the potential to put infinite "buttons" at your command.
Take metroid prime 3. The wii circumevented it's lack of a mouse with the even more intuitive direct pointer. On top of that it circumvented it's lack of buttons by putting the grappling hook on a nunchuck gesture. This worked pretty smoothley and yanking a pirates shield felt pretty visceral and it was a damn fun game. I know this is a pretty small example but it worked well, and the game was otherwise, very traditional. You can hybridize motion controlls and button controls.
If the kinect does nothing else but enable headtracking in FPS and racing games I'll be all over it. It really need not end there. It's not really motion control tech that's the gimmick, it's the lack of creativity using it that's cheap. For the record I don't think stereoscopic 3d is a gimmick either, it's a novelty, overused while its hot, then later toughtfully used to actually add quality to the final product.
You know color and sound were branded as gimmicks by critics when they were added to film. An idea supported by thier, at first, completely overexagerated use. Things like unnaturaly colorful wardrobe or blaring soundtrack. Just sayin.