Gaming is Entertainment - Kinect is Full of Win

With the exception of my son and I, our family is casual gaming.  The only hardcore or serious gaming that has taken place is our MMO experiences.  My nephew, who is a frequent visitor, has done the console thing with my son, playing Halo and EA sports titles.  Aside from all the females playing The Sims – every iteration and incarnation off and on, nothing reigned like MMOs.  The recent addition of a new console, XBox 360, has gotten my girls, brother, sister and other non-gamers into the mix.  As I posted recently, we're playing Red Dead Redemption, which is the first time I've ever seen my sister pick-up a game controller.  My daughter is obsessing over Fable II and Halo: ODST has finally been opened.

They're playing enough now that commercials about E3 caught their attention.  After I finished working for the day we sat down together looking for coverage and highlights.  We ran across the Kinect demonstrations and my house was electrified.  Their voices became loud and boisterous, their movements eager and animated.  They can't wait to get their hands on Kinect and the games that captured their imagination.  Like the Wii changed the gaming demographic and WOW the MMO audience, I think motion is going to redefine what we call games.  Those who consider themselves hardcore gamers might not be happy but I sure as hell am.

Gaming is entertainment.  The boundaries of what constitutes entertainment to different people, is as diverse as the universe itself.  Many of you will have your personal definitions of "game" challenged in the coming months and years.    Even the Facebook games offending some have proven that repetitive clicking and moving things around can capture the attention of many.  Think back to the times you convinced a child to do something by turning it into something fun – a game.  With imagination, just about anything can become a game.  Sure, there will be trash cash-in-quick titles but jewels will also emerge.  This is only the beginning, so early that’s it’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

If you consider yourself a hardcore, died in the wool gamer - grrr, you might find yourself as the minority audience very soon.  My house was rocked by the demonstrations we saw.  Even after I got up, they were scouring the internet for more. I don't have any little ones left.  My kids are all early 20s, my nephew 14, sister early 30s and my brother mid 30s.  We sent links of footage out to others who were equally as eager to give Kinect a try.  So the answer is yes, many people will be willing to wave their hands and wiggle their bodies, and call it gaming.

Of what I saw, the games that interested me most were Star Wars and Child of Eden.  Let a game come along where I can cast magic like the Star Wars demo and I just might lose my mind.  I would also get the Kinectimals for little people accompanying big people that drop by.  All of that aside, what excites me most about Kinect is gaming together again as a family.  They've outgrown the board games, collectively playing The Sims and MMOs didn't attract everyone.  I think Kinect-type games will.

Comments

[mbp]

Can Xbox re-invent itself as a casual gaming machine though? I am not sure that the market will allow them to sell one gaming machine to both casual and hardcore segments. The hardcore shooter fanatics won't be impressed when Microsoft starts advertising their console as a keep fit device while casual family friendly gamers will get worried when they hear that Grand Theft Auto 21 has boobies in it.

Television manages to offer light entertainment and harder core entertainment on one device but game consoles have not reached this level of generic acceptance yet. People still confuse the device with the content with the activity of gaming. Many people still think that "playing the Wii" means playing Wii fit for example.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Not sure why it matters. Hardcore gamers will only be looking for games that appeal to them and the same for casuals. The PC offers both on the same platform. PS3 has Blu-ray for media along side gaming. It's simply a device. People who want that type of gaming experience will get Kinect and others who don't won't.

They are going to go where the money and mass audience lies. Blizzard slowly changing WOW to more accurately reflect the largest percentage of it's audience should be lesson enough. Microsoft, game developers and publishers aren't going to turn a blind eye to the potential just to keep a hardcore audience happy. They will try to please both but are more likely to go with the numbers, if it were an either or decision which I don't believe that it is.

[R.W. Harper]

There's plenty of potential for the casual market for all of the platforms. It will be about a year before we will see if the development community can create enough games for the new Microsoft peripheral to keep it popular.

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@R.W. I agree. Now that my daughters have done Fable 2 - one completed and the other close to it, they want more games. Interestingly enough, they still don't want MMOs. One just ordered FFXIII and the other is doing the Time Management games on Big Fish saying she wishes they had 360 versions. We're still excited about Kinect and waiting for some family games to release.

[Halo Reach Weapons List]

I was at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles last week and watched people controlling objects on a huge screen without a mouse. There was this camera aimed at one woman that captured her movements and by moving her hands in the air she could grab and move things around that was projected onto a big screen. It was a promotion for the new movie The Socerers Apprentice starring Nicolas Cage.

What I saw was the future of video games in the making but leaps and bounds beyond Wii. I think just around the corner is video games becoming completely controled by movements. That will be the new thing and controlers will be so 20th century. People will one day look upon them as we now do about the joystick.

Anyways, thanks for such a thought invoking post, I really enjoyed it.

[Saylah]

@Halo - Thanks. We're still waiting for the games we're interested in trying out. I'm not sure anything will ever replace MMOs in my heart but I certainly have room for quality interactive gaming experiences too. :-)

[Permanent Hair removal new york city]

Gaming is really an best way to entertain you.I have heard lots about the Kinect,these gaming console is really an awesome one and its give an stuff competence to the PSP.