Kinect (project natal)

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Just had an email from amazon about this item and the price its going for is £130 and im not sure if that comes with any games? I think the price is extremely steep i thought it would of been around the £65 mark. Has anyone on here pre ordered it??

Ed

 

I thought it was expensive aswell. I believe from a quick article i read that you get 20 games with it.Im guessing they will be small mini games along the lines of Wii Sports.
It seems better value if bought as a bundle with a console £250.

Doesnt interest me though as i havent played from xbox for a while.

 

The £130 comes with one game - Kinect Adventures. I honestly thought it was going to hit the £150 mark so I am somewhat pleasently surprised.

However I do feel the price will be a barrier to the uptake - especially if you consider that you coulld get a wii with a bunch of games and a couple of controllers.

I havent preordered it but I have asked my parents and girlfriend to pool their money for christmas and birthday and get that and possibly the ubisoft version of wii fit (which is what sold me on the tech) and Dance Central by Harmonix as I think that just looks fun.

 

I had written a really long post on this during a bout of insominia this morning, but my browser crashed before I could post and it didnt recover.

Long and short I got to give this a try last weekend with both the Kinect Sports and Dance Central. Dance Central was by far the better experiance, but I was impressed with both in some ways. So I am off today to put my money down so I can get this as day 1.

Anyone else going for it? or on the fence? Has anyone tried it at the road shows that are going round?

 

I've just forked out for Playstation Move, but I'm going to give it to myself for Christmas...

 

I got this the other week, it's pretty good.. one thing I will say is that you need some space for it.. I've had to rearrange the entire room to be able to play 2 player!

It just needs some decent games out for it now; Sports Champion is the winner at the moment

 

You have to take into account Scalability here. A single PS Move controller is about, say £40. You have to buy one for each person. So a family of 4 playing together would cost £160.

Kinect is a single purchase for all participants (up to whatever its limit is, but I think its at least 4).

 

best deal is £23.50 per controller @ tesco direct.. next best and standard is asda at around 27/28
there's 4 controllers maximum (i think, not sure, not looked)

Starter pack - 39.99 (includes eye, 1x controller)
3x controllers - 25.00
115 +/- 10

I'd prefer to have something to 'feel' for that money spend also.. I just don't like the idea of not having anything to hold to control the game.. AND to be fair, it's all software.. the PS has the Eye (included with the Starter Pack) so i have no doubt they may (if they havent already) develop input like the Kinect

 

There isnt the technology in the eye to do what Kinect does, as it can percieve the depth without the gloeing balls on the controller.

I had a go with the Move last weekend as well and was impressed with how accurate it is, but to my mind it doesnt do anything new and it felt to me like I was playing a high def Wii.

So thats the preorder done, sales monkey instore said that branch was doing an addtional discount on the preorder for Kinect and the games meaning that after the discounts the sensor would come out at £107 not £130.

Not a huge difference but thats halfway to another game so I will take that deal...

 

Yep I'll be getting Kinect on release date. Think it's €150 here.

 

Same here
unless I can pick it up at the Company store before release ;)
they don't do that very often though haha

 

I'll be checking our internal store for it in a few weeks time. If it's there, I'll order it online and it'll get shipped to the office

 

So I picked mine up on launch day and have been living with it for just over a week and so far I am impressed. The sensor itself is very, clever - black magic and voodoo clever. The tracking and voice recognition is hugely impressive, the fabled lag of the device when looking at the direct feed of what the sensor sees is minimal.

The implementation within the dashboard is at once brilliant and lacking. Brilliant because the apps that have been rewritten to support kinect as well as the kinect hub (a miniature dashboard focussed around the kinect) are very slick, allowing either gesture, voice or a combination of both for navigating and selecting. the downside is in some of these apps after you do the initial selection the ability to use voice and gesture goes away and you have to revert to the controller which is quite jarring. The other flaw is that I want to navigate round the normal dashboard with the kinect but that hasn’t been implemented, somewhat like apples walled garden for iOS you can only play where MS say you can.

As far as I am concerned the best feature of the dashboard integration is the ability to wave at the sensor and have it recognise you and sign you in. Still feel like I am living in the future with it.

Moving away from the dashboard to the games my feelings become somewhat more mixed. The first party titles do a great job of showcasing certain aspects of kinect, but none of them appear in the same game. Lag is an issue when playing some of the faster paced games in Adventures - and more prevalent (unshockingly) with two players on screen. Adventures is also limited to the five or six activities it has to offer and it does little to change these up with the more obstacles and less time being the difficulty scale of choice.

What it does well is that its fun, people finish playing this with a smile on their faces. The other thing i really like about this is if you are playing single player and you want your friend to join in, they can stand next to you and wave, if they have a profile they will be signed in with their avatar and the screen will split screen. If not it will drop a generic avatar in and split the screen, and in both cases it does this seamlessly.

The other game I picked up was Dance Central by Harmonix and is very slick and impressive. They have implemented their own system which has you selecting by moving you arm up and down out to the side and then swiping across your body with your arm. This is a far faster selection method than the hover over the icon for a minute used through the kinect hub and first party titles. The game is simple to understand and has you copying the prerendered dancer on screen with a selection of cue cards on the right showing you the upcoming moves. Feedback is given to the player by a circle under the dancer changing colour from Red (bad) to blue (flawless) and by limbs on the dancer being outlined in red to show you which bits of the move you are getting wrong. Lag hasn’t been an issue in the 15 hours or so I have played so far as what the sensor sees is relegated to a small box on the side of the screen - and because of this you don’t think about it you just play and the game recognises what you are doing.

The game comes unstuck when it comes to its feature list, there is no single player campaign or ability to setup track lists to play through - both of which have been staples of Rock Band for a few years. Also the fact the game will only score one person (though track more) means that competitive dancing is limited to a take turns approach in the "dance battle" mode. Another, to my eyes at least, annoying fault is that any achievements earned are awarded to all signed in players, which as some of these are really tough is somewhat irksome

So in conclusion, the technology is excellent but limited in the os implementation. The software, for first wave titles, is pretty good to excellent in some respects but the promise of what is to come is astounding.

Sensor: 9/10
Adventures: 7/10
Dance Central: 8.5/10

 

I think its a bit expensive too, I havnt got an XBOX but if I did its not something I would consider buying at that price. Also, no doubt within a couple of months, it will be reduced to a toy you get out at christmas.......kinda like the wii. Actually it reminds me of the PS2 Eyetoy , just obviously a better version but that didnt require a controller either - just motion sensor from the camera.


Speaking of Motion controllers...........anyone ever seen the one brought out for the Megadrive/genesis a long time ago


It was basically a device brought out by sega in the early 9's, octagan device that projected lasers if I rember rightly to capture your movements. It was meant for fighting games....................it didnt do much:P


and heres a Vid


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=780bIG6TXFk

 

The concept is similar to the eye toy but goes much further and is much smooth and better done. It is expensive and really needs to be mounted on your tv or wall for bet performance.

I forgot to mention this in the other post, however space is an issue. The nearer you can get the sensor to 6 feet off the ground and aligned with the centre of the TV the better. Mounting the sensor on top of the tv as opposed to by its base (its a 32"tv) gained me about 1 foot of additional usable space.

Do not fork out for their TV mount is it is £40. 63p worth of bluetack works just as well.

 

I was going to pick this up as a Christmas gift for my significant other... however although I have no issues in spending that much money, I still think it's way too expensive for what it is. We already own a Wii and have lots of fun when playing so I figured if I am going to spend that much money, I'd get her something else. However I am sure that over the years it will have many improvements and the price will go down.