There has been a great deal of speculation recently as to what Microsoft’s new motion-sensing console add-on, Kinect, will actually be capable of when it begins shipping to the public this November.
The project’s creative director, Kudo Tsunoda, has begun speaking out in order to set the record straight on Kinect’s functionality as well as defending widespread criticism regarding pricing.
In an interview with Videogamer.com, Tsunoda states that it is software coding and development, not hardware, which has imposed a two-player limitation on many of the games that will be available for Kinect. He states that there will be games, such as Dance Central, which will allow simultaneous participation by more than two players, but that display limitations have caused developers to incorporate a maximum of two players in multi-play modes.
“Certainly if you look at a game, go down on the floor, Dance Central is already incorporating a lot more than two players. So you know it's not necessarily any kind of limitation as much as it is developers just trying to customize the experiences around what they think is the best way to play,” Tsunoda said. “You can see like sometimes in a split-screen game it's hard to add more and more players because it's hard to see what's going on - and that's true of any game.”
Tsunoda also addresses some of the burning questions we’ve had about the differences between Microsoft’s Kinect and Sony’s PlayStation Move, which costs much less but appears to have similar functionality.
He states that the biggest difference regarding the game play experience is that Kinect offers whole-body tracking, whereas the Move only tracks a few points on the player’s body. This should allow the Xbox 360 to engage players in more active full-body motion games like football and other field sports.
As far as the price is concerned, Tsonoda says that the higher retail of the Kinect is justified because it will be the only hardware that consumers will have to buy in order to play the games.
“As far as the cost goes. I think the great thing about Kinect is you only have to buy one sensor. Once you buy the sensor that enables all the experience, it enables all the multiplayer that you want to do. It's not like OK, oh wait I want to play with more people, I have to go out and buy more controllers. Oh wait, here comes a new driving game, here's a new peripheral. And all of a sudden you're spending so much money on extra controllers, peripherals, batteries, all those kinds of things. And with Kinect you just buy one sensor and then you're done.”
Unfortunately, there is no mention of the Kinect hardware downgrade and whether future releases will restore the American Sign Language and lip reading capability the device was originally supposed to have. It is promising, however, that Microsoft employees close to the project are beginning to give us some more insight into the device before the release. Hopefully, we’ll be hearing more soon.
