Talking Point: Can Move Conquer Kinect in the Long Run?

High tech gaming comes at a high cost. You get what you pay for!

As for Move/Kinect, I seriously see them both neck and neck. I think Kinect will bring out a controller for one hand at least to solve some major control limitations and they will both find there markets.

I could see Kinect doing some major things in the casual market, though I just heard their major casual release, Project Milo, might be canceled. I worry mostly about how well Kinect will differentiate between movements. In the demo for "Fighters Uncaged" guys were doing knee kicks and uppercuts, and it seemed kind of jumbled. Also, many of the demos for Kinect Adventures make the thing seem like its still in its beta phase, as sometimes it doesn't register anything. Kinect definitely offers something more than the Wii 2.0 experience given by Move, but that Wii 2.0 experience works...

I don't see myself being envious of Kinect at all, as I've yet to see it do anything particularly impressive.

Gesture recognition has already been done on the PS Eye in EyePet, with you able to stroke the pet, and certain menus being navigable by waving your hand and 'knocking' them around.

But besides that, navigating menus by waving your arms is a gimmick which soon wears thin. It becomes tiresome, and before long, you'll be back to pressing a button on a controller. It may look cool for a few seconds in a movie. It may even feel cool for a few minutes doing it yourself. But before long, you'll realise a button is far simpler and much quicker. Much like they've done with Move, Sony could easily implement gesture navigation of the XMB using the PS Eye.

I'm also baffled by the amazement people seem to be experiencing over the speech recognition. Speech recognition is nothing new, and could be implemented on the PS Eye, or in fact any system with a microphone. It's getting touted almost as an exclusive 'feature' of Kinect when in fact it's software drive, and has nothing to do with the hardware at all, aside from the fact that the camera has a microphone attached.

As for games, I've yet to see Kinect do anything spectacular. In fact, I've yet to see it do even the basics at an average level. Every video or demonstration I've seen which wasn't faked/staged has shown the system to be fairly deficient in many areas, often failing to recognise anything from simplest gestures, right up to the largest movements. It certainly appears to be nothing like as capable as the glitzy "product vision" video Microsoft showed at E3 2009.

The simple fact is that without buttons, and with Kinect not precise enough to recognise small gestures, the input for games is going to be quite limited - there's just no getting away from that. For anything but basic game control, it's about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Having said all that, I'm sure it'll sell well - perhaps even better than Move. Why? Because Microsoft will throw a huge advertising budget at it to convince people it's way better than it is, and - well - the target audience of 'casual' gamers are more than a little gullible.

I used to say Move no question. But now I'm not so sure. None of Move's games have really been that great so far. Though Eyepet has yet to be reviewed on here (and I doubt that could manage a nine anyway, although I haven't played it so maybe I'm wrong), nothing has managed better than an 8. Tumble sounds fun. Resident Evil is Resident Evil, although it's already been done on Wii. Tiger Woods should be pretty good, but again, same as RE. Sports Champions is decent, but nothing spectacular and without the same amount of content that Wii Sports Resort managed. Most of the rest appears OK to bad.

It's still almost impossible to know how accurate Kinect will be, although let's just say that it turns out to be pretty darn acurate, though not perfect. First: Kinect has Dance Central, which, if Kinect itself can take off, will be a monstorous hit. Second, Kinect has more potential for something NEW that we haven't seen really done before, al la Dance Central. We've seen Resident Evil (with motion controls), we've seen Tiger Woods, we've seen a sports minigame compilation (with more Sports to boot), and even Tumble has been drawing comparisons to Boom Blox (although there's a chance that I'm completely wrong in saying that). Point is, Kinect has the potential to do something different, whereas Move has a lot less of a chance.

Only time will tell.

With Nintendo's strong hold on the casual market, it's too early to say who will be on top

Bit early for this talk ain't it? Kinect ain't even out yet, very few games have been announced for both, and Move's initial sales figures still aren't available. Anything said now would just be pointless conjuncture with little to back it up.

That's why it's a talking point Move's out now, people know what it can do but they can't help but look to Kinect and wonder which will emerge victorious.

For what it's worth, a friend of mine used Kinect the other day and says it's absolutely unbelievable. It's never too early to discuss anything in my opinion!

I can give the answer in 1 word: Software. So yes, Move will outsell and outdo Kinect with ease

"It's still almost impossible to know how accurate Kinect will be"

Not really. It measures movement in 4cm 'cubes', so it's never going to be anywhere near as accurate as Move. Not sure how accurate Wii Motion Plus is, but even that may offer more accuracy.

(Source: Second paragraph of first green box-out at http://kotaku.com/5442775/natal-recognizes-31-body-parts-uses-tenth-of-xbox-360-computing-resources)