Finally Kinect is just a few days away. The excitement has been building for almost a year between all the press events and trailers, and coming down to the wire I wonder what does Kinect offer that the Wii and PS Move don’t already have weeks, months, and years sooner. Before the Wii came along, I was one of the 5 people who bought the Eye Toy for the PS One. It was slow to react and only sensed wide grandiose gestures like an old world Italian family arguing. Flash forward to the Eye Toy 2, a little better but still absolute crap. The big failure was for both the Eye Toys was they had all of 3 games, and they were all the same. After those huge flops in motion control Sony flat out said motion is a gimmick and real gamers would never use it. Cut to 2006… September, Microsoft unveils the Xbox Live Vision, which turns out to be for all intensive purpose the Eye Toy 3. With the addition of the same 3 Eye Toy games and the ability to video chat to one of the other 10 people on Xbox Live who bought it or even play Texas Hold’Em or Uno to watch if someone is bluffing. I used it twice, once to take a new profile picture and once on a game to make sure it worked. November, The Wii shows up and Nintendo changes what the world considers a game. With the first free game included in a system since Mario, Wii Sports is still one of the most popular games on the system. Sales of Wii skyrocket and people from 10-100 scramble to get their hands on it. I myself even made up an elaborate story about a fictional wife making me sleep on the couch until I die if I forgot to get it for my fictional son’s birthday. Luckily after calling every retailer I could think of it worked on some poor pathetic Blank’s Blank employee. Sony and Microsoft after the huge failures of motion control write off Wii and go about their business models like it doesn’t exist until they lose billions in revenue. Cut to 2010… Sony brings out the PS Move in what could be the most underwhelming media blitz ever, I didn’t know it had even come out until I saw it in a weekly ad. Sony’s all but forgotten the merciless attacks on the Wii and now has a controller that looks exactly like the Wiimote but with a cute colored globe on top. The first thing Sony has going for the PS Move is the fact that Sony fanboys are loyal to the grave. The final thing, the better control gives it the ability to be used in real games and is even launching with a top shelf exclusive first person shooter under its belt. Finally at long last the history lesson is over and we’re 3 and a half days from Kinect. Their tag lines are many but I personally liked “Who would have thought you would grow up to be a controller.” Kinect allows you to voice control your Xbox, and every aspect of Xbox can be controlled by motion. Besides the obvious cool factor of your Xbox now the closest you will get to living out your Minority Report fantasies, It also has a kind of Skynet always watching you vibe to it. I will reserve judgment until the day it comes out, but I for one am excited to be a controller instead of just throwing one. That's how this gamer sees it.
