Kinect has been out for roughly a year. Â The motion controller which gave many gamers lofty expectations, has yet to fulfill those promises with offerings that extend into popular franchises. Â This fall marks the first of those core franchises to adopt Kinect functionality in Forza 4, and they’ll get first crack at introducing Kinect to the core audience.
With Forza Motorsport 4, Turn 10 hopes to introduce new ways that the motion controller can be utilized to enhance gameplay experiences. Â While it’s still secondary in nature to the traditional control scheme that Forza racers are accustomed to, it will introduce many new ways to interact with the game. Â Using the sensor in Autovista mode, head tracking, or even a full on steering mechanism are only a handful of ways that the device will be utilized. Will it pay off though?
Dan Greenwalt recently sat down to speak with Computer and Video Games about the potential of the device, and whether the controller is all that its cracked up to be.
“We’re just at the tip of the iceberg with Kinect. As a creative industry, this is fairly new to us still. I know it seems like ‘Wow it’s been out a full year.’ But it’s only been out a full year. There’s a lot more time to go… If you look at Ubisoft with Ghost Recon, you look at Bioware with Mass Effect, other triple A large franchises that are known for innovation – for pushing – are picking it up and saying ‘Yeah we can do something really cool with this.  Not because we have to but because this is an awesome creative challenge and we want to surprise our customers with cool new experiences.”
There have been some great Kinect experiences thus far, but I wouldn’t call them core gaming by a long shot. Â Though you can’t count the developers out just yet.
“I think most people think, ‘Well I haven’t thought of anything and so therefore there’s nothing that can be done.’ That’s just silly, our job is to come up with new ideas and surprise people.”
