Following my "where are the hardcore games" Kinect pricing post the other day a Microsoft exec has said that core games are on the horizon. Xbox 360 marketing exec Albert Penello told IndustryGamers that Kinect is not about alienating or abandoning the core 360 gamer audience.
We started our briefing off by ripping a guy's arm off and beating him to death with it. I don't think we have any interest in sort of getting away from controllers and getting away from the core games that got us here. This box was a response, you know, from us to the people that have followed us along and really asked for features for the console. Kinect is about getting other people in the house.
Penello then talks about how Kinect will appeal to non-gamers, alhough he fails to mention the potentially high cost of the hardware..
Core gamers will say to me, 'What is Kinect going to do for me?' Well, you probably have a girlfriend, or you have a sister, or a brother, or a niece, or a nephew, or a wife, or a mom, or an aunt who you've probably wanted to have experience, you know, the kind of stuff that you enjoy. And oh, by the way, we're doing some really cool stuff with dash navigation and the people who experience it really get a kick out of the sort of virtual reality/Minority Report style. And oh by the way, we just launched the thing. At no point have we ever said, 'I don't have any interest in having core games come out on Kinect.' We wanted to come out and make a statement that said, 'We want to try and do something different than the Wii, different than wands and hands, something that's magical, that takes away the abstraction, and I want a bunch of new types of games created.'
The obvious question then is what types of "core games" can we expect to see using Kinect? Halo fans needn't get too excited...
I don't want to see Halo band-aided into Kinect, because Halo is a controller game, and I think that would be not what we're trying to achieve. I want to see what a new type of experience would be.
Rumours suggest PC owners may get Kinect in 2011 but for now the focus is on the 360. Does this - frankly sensible - aim to get core games using Kinect make you more likely to buy? Or is the pricing key?
