Editorial: Will Microsoft's Kinect Ever Connect With Hardcore Gamers?

Autumn is a time for gaming. When the beaches close and the schools open, it becomes a priority. Triple-A titles and new consoles are launched, and the hopes gamers have been nursing all year about their favorite upcoming releases are realized, for better or worse.

It's also a time for retrospection, for thinking about the year that's passed—and in doing so, for looking ahead. This fall marks the one-year anniversary of Kinect, Microsoft's ambitious controller-free gaming device. Its ingenuity is undeniable, but its real success is too intangible to be easily defined.

The greatest misconception about Kinect is that it's just another peripheral for the Xbox 360, like a racing wheel or arcade fighting sticks. Kinect alters the gaming experience in far more important ways than these simple hardware additions, yet that's how many people seem to regard it. Expectations surrounding the device are often warped in one direction or another.

Developers do it too. Traditional games have all hinged on one thing: tactile input by players. By removing that requirement, Microsoft has created a system with endless possibilities. Yet the titles being developed fall into two tired categories: games that are too shallow to matter, and traditional experiences with improbable control schemes shoehorned in. There are exceptions (Child of Eden, and to a limited degree, Dance Central), but until developers break these moulds en masse, Kinect will continue to be just another peripheral.

Part of that is Microsoft's fault. They're the kind of corporation that's used to getting their wish, so when they unveiled Kinect at E3 2009 (back then, it was "Project Natal"), they promised features that couldn't possibly be delivered: intelligent AI that would learn and repeat players' names, scanning of real-life objects for use in-game, instantaneous and responsive Minority Report-style interface controls.

Instead we got mind-numbing ports of iPhone games (Fruit Ninja) and interfaces that require players to hold their hands in the air for several seconds to make a selection. It's like waiting for a high five that will never come.

In place of the 1:1 movement that was promised, our bodies are treated quite literally like controllers—jumping in the air is like pressing the A button, in that it makes a character on-screen jump. But the character jumps higher and stays in the air longer, because your jump was nothing more than an input command. This maintains the disconnect between players and games that's always existed, the same divide that Kinect was supposed to connect all along. (Get it?)

But this is an important time for Kinect. Despite its failings so far, there's a flood of games coming out in the next six months that may finally push the industry in the right direction. Zombie-maiming romp Rise of Nightmares has been met with a less-than-stellar Metacritic rating of 51. If there's one thing almost every review seems to mention, it's that Sega tried to force unconventional controls into a blandly traditional game. The problem isn't Kinect; it's Sega's insistence on trying to force Kinect to work in an old-school, un-fun game. And it's still the closest thing yet to a good, hardcore Kinect game.

Rise of Nightmares' failure is a symptom of a bigger problem: what gamers want and what they think they want is rarely the same thing. In the past, the industry has had to look backward to move forward. The last decade's resurgence of side-scrolling platformers (Limbo, Braid etc.) went hand in hand with the the popularization of downloadable titles because 2D games are small in size and attractive impulse buys. Now XBLA and PSN titles are often as robust as their retail counterparts, but old school had to pave the way. The rise of casual games has only made it worse; "hardcore" gamers are obsessed with the past and unwilling to accept the change the future will inevitably bring.

The irony is that the hardcore, old school games everyone's clamoring for on Kinect will never really work without physical inputs. Playing Halo with Kinect is fun to joke about (see: the video above), but there are those who actually think that would be a good thing. One option is for developers to find better ways to implement Kinect with current genres without doing away with controllers; that's where games like Mass Effect 3 and Forza 4 come in. They may find Kinect's sweet spot by using it where it makes sense in tandem with a controller. And games like Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor and The Gunstringer promise familiar experiences, yet with carefully thought-out Kinect control schemes.

On the other hand, the Child of Eden school of thought would do away with recognizable genres entirely to create completely unique experiences. How well the upcoming slew of titles work will ultimately determine the direction Kinect development takes for the next few years. One of Microsoft's newest trailers, currently viewable from the Xbox Live dashboard, touts the motto "Nothing between you and the games," and while I'd like to add a snarky "except clunky, ridiculous control schemes," there's still a chance Kinect will win us over.