subject: Is The Xbox Kinect Showing The Future For 3D Games? [print this page] Is The Xbox Kinect Showing The Future For 3D Games?
Everyone is talking about the Xbox Kinect system right now and there is a huge amount of hype around it. It has seemed to me over the last week or two I haven't been able to switch on my television or go online to check my email or whatever without being presented with an advert for the Microsofts new Kinect system for the Xbox 360 console. The Kinect is sure to be one of the best selling computer game products for Christmas 2010, and I have heard or read several commentators suggesting that the Kinect is going to change computer gaming forever and is a really major development.
What I would like to argue is that this new system from Xbox really isn't all that major a development at the moment, but it could be. I do think that it is better than its competitors in the physical gaming market, the Playstation Move or Wii controller, but when you look at the games for each of these three systems they are all fairly similar, and while the Kinect offers a bit of extra freedom and is, in my opinion, an improvement, it doesn't take things to the next level as some have suggested.
The exciting thing about this system, and the possibility of others like it in the future, is what it could do when combined with 3D technology. Up until now 3D has been very eagerly taken up by a small minority of gamers, but hasn't really broken into the mainstream. But imagine if you could not only view a 3D environment, but you could plkace yourself inside it and interact using the movements of your actual physical body using a system like the Kinect. OK, so this still falls far short of the dream of having your own personal holodeck in your home, but it seems to me to offer the possibility of taking a big step in that direction, which I personally think is very exciting indeed.
