Microsoft: Star Wars Kinect, new Forza out next Christmas
Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda has revealed that we won’t get our hands on LucasArts’ Star Wars title for Kinect and the next Forza, featuring Kinect compatibility, until about a year’s time.
“We have a Kinect Star Wars game coming out for next holiday [Christmas 2011],” Tsunoda told BBC.
“I think you could just easily imagine being a Jedi and using Kinect to make you feel you’re part of a Star Wars experience, building yourself up into a Jedi.”
He added: “And another one next year is Forza, which is the best racing game of this generation of consoles… Those are the two games I’m most excited about.”
Kinect, Microsoft’s hands-free motion controller, is now available for Xbox 360.
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Ah, that’s good. That’ll hopefully give developers enough time to find a way to make their complex and detailed games work without any buttons..
Wonder how the next Forza will go.. It’s going to have a very tough time against GT5. Well, when GT5 eventually releases. I don’t mind a bit of Forza, so pretty interested to see how that goes.
STAR WARS:
Silly question but if you had to choose to play a game where you wield a lightsaber would you rather be holding the Move wand or pretending to be holding one? Thought so.
A Star Wars game is a perfect way to differentiate Move from Kinect at least when it comes to games/experiences that aren’t geared towards toddlers or drunks.
Also, everyone does realize that the footage that MS showed off at their Kinect event at E3 was fake right? There was no way the game (or should I say pre-rendered video) on the screen was actually being controlled by the guy on stage and there’s enough video on the web to prove it.
FORZA:
It will suck. Why? Because there won’t be any skill involved. My guess is the game will accelerate for you which means it’ll probably automatically brake for you too which also means you’re really not doing anything that requires any real skill. And what about people that prefer manual transmission as opposed to automatic? How will you switch gears and work the clutch?
Moreover if Forza considers itself a true racing sim and is trying to match up with GT they’ll damage their reputation and look like they’re merely trying to jump on the Kinect bandwagon for a cheap cash in. It’d be like KRS One using auto tune on his next album (everyone over 30 will understand what I mean).
BOTTOM LINE:
Both ideas suck. I still think Kinect is an interesting device and will propel MS passed the competition but there’s no way it was meant for anything other than Dance Central and Kinect Adventure mini-games. Does anyone really want to stand up for 6 hours playing Star Wars or hold their arms out in front of themselves (sitting or standing) for hours on end playing Forza? Doubt it.
If Forza requires Kinect, then yeah.. It will far more than likely fail hard.
If there’s a Kinect compatible mode to play in, then the game would still be playable, just not that mode.
I mirror your concerns about Kinect. How well it’ll go in the long run is still pretty debatable. Depends on how well they can get it working for other genres besides Casual games like Dance games will determine that.