Will Kinect turn 360 fortunes around?
If you still have your eyes glued on World Cup fixtures, don’t forget that Microsoft pre-empted everyone today by announcing a new 360 model as well as the final name for Natal, now rebranded as Kinect. I’ve been talking a little bit for the last while around here at Game Over Online that the 360 really needs a winner to turn things around. It survived the RROD fiasco but it’s not exactly in a thriving position. It needs something to turn it around. Will the $150 Kinect do it? I don’t know. I’m a little worried there isn’t much to show that regular 360 owners can use Kinect when their new model says it’s Kinect ready.
More concerning is on the software side. Yes, Microsoft has some of its heaviest hitters like Halo, Gears and Fable all announced. But look at Kinect’s launch lineup versus what’s coming down the pipe for 360 in general. There’s a huge difference in the quality of titles. Kinect’s titles so far look like clones of Wii games and a few predictable rhythm and dance titles. Not even Fable III is in the first list, which is a little worrying. And some of the biggest franchise titles coming out like Halo Reach and Gears of War 3 – all really the final kick in the can for the 360 as Bungie is leaving to do multi-platform and there have been rumours Epic might as well, you would hope that Kinect would have leveraged some of that.
Hopefully as third party publishers work through their announcements during the week, there will be some more quality titles for Kinect. And of course, Microsoft needs to work on bundling this into a reasonably priced holiday bundle. I wouldn’t be surprised to see another round of price cuts by the holiday to install a Kinect+slim 360 at the current price point.
No doubt Microsoft got the message that their platform was getting a bit tired. With the departure of some Xbox originals, the 360 will heavily depend on Kinect to turn around its fortunes. It’s been a good console for the last 5 years. It needs some push to give it some legs to last a few more years. It would have been more bold to impose Kinect as a mandatory add-on in the current slate of hardware but I do understand Microsoft needs to consider the millions upon millions of consoles out there and what game designers would have to do to accommodate them.
Microsoft’s shown its cards for the rest of the year. Let’s see what Sony and Nintendo have up their sleeves tomorrow.