What is your most important sense? I'm pretty sure most of you will say its your eyesight. Now then, if you should someday be unfortunate enough to become blind, there is still the possibility of getting by in this world. After all, many people do. If you were to lose your sense of touch however, how do you think you would cope?
We tend not to notice our sense of touch because it is so fundamentally part of who we are. The fact that you know you are sat down or stood up is through touch. You can only walk if you can sense the ground beneath your feet and the muscles in your legs. Eating would be next to impossible, just picking up the food and getting it to your mouth would be, shall we say, less than dignified.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":693749,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"gbunfiltered,","session":"D"}']Why then, has Microsoft decided that they want to emulate the feeling of being without our most important sense? If you want to interact with objects you have to touch them, this is fundamental, we are touchy creatures. If I can't even pick my nose without touch how am I supposed to drive a race car or engage in a swordfight?
Next time you play a racing or action game, turn off vibration completely. Notice how much less immersive it feels. You need that tactile feedback, that bridge. Sure, as an interface between the real and digital world, your standard controller is fairly primitive, but at least its there, its tangible. The act of pulling a trigger, feeling the recoil, gone with Kinect. The feel of the bumps in the road, the tyres losing grip, gone with Kinect. The shudder as you send some guys balls through his rib cage with your boot, gone with Kinect.
I'm all for making games more accessible to the little ones and grandma, but grandma isn't an ameoba, she has fingers and thumbs that she's been using all her life for knitting and putting her curlers in, she's not completely useless (yet).
Look MS, if you want to do motion control fine, I have no problem with that, but please don't do so by making games less interactive, less of an experience.
There are of course areas in which Kinect can be useful, and it is clever tech, but as a primary gaming control interface it strays too far from how we (and virtually every other creature on the planet ) have evolved to interact with the world and thats why for me, Kinect is strictly look, dont touch.