I will be the first to admit that I have often found reason to criticise Microsoft in the past, but every now and then they do something which deserves attention and credit. Of course you can guess from the title I'm talking about Kinect. I've seen a lot of people (read teenagers) making comments on Youtube videos about how awful Kinectimals is. Well I have a four year old son who thinks it's the best thing ever and I've been surprised at just how quickly he's taken to this new control system.
Ironically we bought it to prolong the life of the TV as we had visions of wii-motes going flying into things. Just a couple of days after we got the new console he flew one of his planes into the TV and we now have a small line across the screen. That's kids for you.
So is this new toy worth the asking price? Well I beleive it is but I would have changed some of the software. For example, I would have produced a sports disc which has the same games which are available for the wii. Think about it... I now have to find golf, bowling and softball before I can think about offloading the wii. That got me thinking even more though. Why should we be paying £30-40 for a disc with half a dozen mini-games and invariably end up with some we will never actually use. It would make more sense to offer some sort of compile-your-own-sports-disc or in the case of the X360 you could opt to download the ones you want.
Just looking through the available compilations there are many which have some sort of appeal. I can see my wife enjoying the horse-riding in kinect motion sports and I expect my son would like the hand-gliding. American football however is not likely to appeal to any of us. So what's the answer? Well for us I think it's sit back and wait for some of these to appear in the pre-owned section of the local Game stores. The xbox does seem to excel in this area because for some reason pre-owned xbox games appear to sell cheaper than their wii equivalents. Maybe that's all the teenagers trading in their old titles for the latest call of duty. Whatever the reason, £10 for a pre-used title for the xbox does more to sell consoles than £17 for the same pre-used title on the wii. For this I am glad to now be "Kinnected".
