Kinect Reviews

[Hedon]

March 11th if the latest rumours are to be believed.

My son is saving all his gift cards and cash for that bad boy. I can't blame him. He has probably 700-1000 hours in play on his DS

[benplace]

So I got the Kinect this weekend, read my review

I know it seems like I am shamelessly plugging my blog, which I have to admit I am, but I am proud of it. :)

Let me know what you think of the review.

[Ironman273]

Kinect Unloved And Lonely In Tokyo

In an effort to give Japanese gamers a hands body-on with Kinect, Xbox Japan set up a demo station at a large electronics store in Tokyo's Shinjuku. Make that, a lonely demo station — for now, at least!

According to the individual who took these images, the photos were snapped sometime between 1 and 2pm. And perhaps, more people tried the device out during the evening.

The reaction online to these photos is telling. Besides snide remarks like "Smashing success", Japanese internet people seem surprised by how much space the Kinect requires. If anything, the demo kiosk could put off players who live in small, urban apartments.

Others point out that playing Kinect like this in the middle of an electronics store is somewhat embarrassing.

Microsoft typically has an uphill battle with its game equipment in The Land of the Rising Sun. Early indications are that Kinect will be no different.

Source: Kotaku

Breaking news: Japan indifferent about Xbox!! :laugh:

[George P Global Moderator]

There's a few factors at play with kinect in Japan, first is space ofc, they live in closets. :p Second is that at 1-2PM they're probably at school or at work still, It's not like the store in general is packed anyways. They should set it up in an arcade, yes Japan still has arcades, and see how it does there.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

The scene will be very different tonight in the UK :yes:

[firebelly]

have fun in UK today :)

[Rudy]

I can't see myself having enough space in my living room for it :/ I have a pretty large living room BUT I also have a lot of furniture in it

[Evolution]

Well I just sawed one of my shelves down to a third of the width and have thus added about 2/3rds of a foot, which has helped in games. I found with only 6.5-7 feet, Kinect Adventures would sometimes stop recognizing me in the middle of a game, however now with the extra space, it doesn't seem to be a problem anymore. If you don't have 7 feet of space or more, then don't bother getting it.

Edit: It was easier just to put it on top of a book case right below my monitor against the wall.

[Ironman273]

This is from yesterday's Penny Arcade. :)

[...]At home, the strange season continues.

Brenna is going to house-sit with a friend of hers this weekend, and she wants to know how hard it would be to bring the Kinect over there to play Dance Central. You and I know that decoupling an entertainment appliance from the mothership is annoying, occasionally dangerous, but not impossible. The point is that she has never asked, once, in the golden decade of our impervious union, if she could take anything of any kind any-fu**ing-where.

She takes an animist view of technology as a rule. She thinks that generally speaking we are bombarded by rays, that the modern world is the equivalent of an electromagnetic iron maiden and that our genetics are being perforated at all times by gnawing "serrator waves" from sources known and (even more troublingly) unknown.

I used to be more into Dance Dance Revolution than I was ever entirely comfortable telling you, I had a modded pad and my playlist was Nori Nori Nori, Butterfly, and Sandstorm. I tried for years to get Brenna to try it, and she would occasionally shuffle around on the pad in accordance with some imagined duty, but she never gave a s**t and I couldn't fully blame her. They had merely taken a controller and made it flat; she was not fooled. It was, to her, profoundly unlike dancing, with its southern chaos and its immobile Irish torsos.

Now she's helping me move the couch so we can dance in the living room. She goes to bed at 9:30 on the dot, the dot, and we were up until almost eleven. She cranked the ever-loving s**t out of that soldier. She's going to buy DLC for it one of these days, I swear it, just by moving her hand around in space, and I'm going to wonder what fu**ing planet I'm on.

Source: Penny Arcade

[George P Global Moderator]

^ Sounds like MS got it right now, the only downside being that you need a good chunk of room to play games with so space is a issue for people. I could picture a Kinect 2.0 device years from now that works faster and needs less room, I'd even bet on it actually.

[threetonesun]

After spending some more time with the Kinect, the room issue isn't as bad as people make it out to be. I think it's a distance most living rooms could accommodate with some temporary re-arranging.

As for shortening the distance requirement, I don't know that they'll be able to. If you're talking about two adults side by side, you can only make the space between them so small and still allow them to move side to side and front to back independently. I think that's the bigger issue than the camera's FOV.

Also, Dance Central is still awesome, even if the g/f keeps killing me at it.

[Hedon]

Yeah, I have found that most people are needing the same room for Kinect as they do for the Wii/Move as well.

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

From what I've heard from my mate who works in an electronics store and from what I have seen tonight myself, people love Kinect & are really impressed with it.

I was playing Kinect Adventures and caught the attention of some elderly man. After I finished my game he couldn't wait to try it himself.

[kazuyette]

I bought one for work ( yes ! :) ) and it's an amazing piece of hardware ! I'm really really impressed by the precision of the detection. But I won't buy for myself right now because as a core gamer no games are appealing to my tastes right now. But I would gladly recommend it to someone looking into buying a console for casual gaming.

[spaceelf]

I bought one for work ( yes ! :) ) and it's an amazing piece of hardware ! I'm really really impressed by the precision of the detection. But I won't buy for myself right now because as a core gamer no games are appealing to my tastes right now. But I would gladly recommend it to someone looking into buying a console for casual gaming.

Yeah the one non casual game for it moderately sucks. It's disappointing. I like Kinect Sports far better than Kinect Adventures or Fighters Uncaged, that's all I got (just got Sports at 1am or so and played it on and off for hours then rented Scott Pilgrim and loved that. Been a good night. :) )

[carmatic]

I bought one for work ( yes ! :) ) and it's an amazing piece of hardware ! I'm really really impressed by the precision of the detection. But I won't buy for myself right now because as a core gamer no games are appealing to my tastes right now. But I would gladly recommend it to someone looking into buying a console for casual gaming.

its important to remember that 'core gamers' are a subset of casual gamers, not the other way round... when kinect becomes standard on every xbox console, then it will become acceptable for game companies to produce games which simulatenously use the gamepad (the 'core gamer' part) as well as Kinect (since it can track people sitting down)... having the xbox controllers be wireless by default is an advantage...

[Ironman273]

Wow. Again on Penny Arcade. And Old Navy? :blink:

Brenna took my Xbox and its grim Observator to a party, and when she returned near midnight, she didn't have it with her. She'd left it at the party because the gathered throng were so amused by Dance Central that she couldn't bear to withdraw their Funk Totem. When her friend Ellen brought it back the next day, she wanted to know if they could get one for their Xbox, or if you had to have some special version, or what. I don't know what the arrangement is between Microsoft and Harmonix; whatever it is, it can't possibly be commensurate with their contribution. "Free Dance Central" when you spend 25 dollars at Old Navy? When would Old Navy have ever been in striking range of those wretched Goddamned werewolves and sorcerers in Redmond?

The Kinect requires no peripherals as such, though you often get a few in the mix without meaning to; lamps, Afghani poufs, architectural models, young people, you know. Other things. Other sharp things.

[Ironman273]

Demo at Best Buy. :laugh:

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Ha, that's what I was like last week in my mate's work.

Those hip moves are hard! :laugh:

[Massiveterra]

So I decided to buy a Kinect yesterday. I found out that we're going to have guests over on both Saturday and Sunday plus many times this holiday season, and I have $170 gamestop credit, so I bought the Kinect and Dance Central for $30.

To preface my review, I was a Kinect skeptic. Although the technology looked cool, it really seemed not different than the wii as far as interaction.

And man, did the Kinect exceed my expectations. It's the first piece of technology that gave me the "wow, we're living in the future" feeling. My girlfriend, her friend, and I played Kinect Adventures and Dance Central for about 3 or 4 hours last night without even knowing those hours passed. It was great fun, and the WOW moments surpassed the initial WOW moments I had when the Wii first arrived.

The Kinect is far more accurate than what everyone is saying. I didn't notice any lag, and was pretty accurate when tracking my head and hands. And I am a "darker skinned" person, and the Kinect has no problem tracking me at all.

Owning the hardware makes me not understand some of the major arguments I find on this board or other places in the internet.

Hardcore games - first and foremost, I do not understand why people are looking for hardcore games. This (and even Move) feels like it's developed specifically to have fun in your living room with other people. I actually DO NOT WANT to see hardcore games supporting the hardware, basically because I do not want to be exhausted flailing my arms while playing a first person shooter or action game.

Accuracy - From what I've experienced, Kinect is pretty damn accurate. It knows exactly where you are with unnoticeable lag. I was so surprised of the response from the hardware. And what's even more surprising is how easy it identifies when another person enters the game.

For those that have friends over all of the time or have kids, this is a perfect addition to the xbox. If you aren't that type of person, I say approach with caution. If I can equate this experience with tabletop games, think of the Xbox like Warhammer and think of Kinect like Scrabble. Scrabble is a great game to play and may be even better to play with family and friends over. But as far as enthusiats and hardcore players, Warhammer is the way to go.