Kinect Is Here To Stay
Kinect isn't going away. It isn't something that if hardcore gamers ignore long enough, it will just disappear. It has sold more than ten million units (the last official sales data from Microsoft is from March 2011, so that number is likely to be a fair bit higher now) in its first year, and you don't just abandon 10-15 million users because some hardcore gamers can't shut up about how much they hate Kinect.
With any new hardware tech, there is always a fear that it won't get a foothold in the marketplace and will be suddenly discontinued, and all of the early adopters of the tech will be left out in the cold with an expensive doorstop (the Nintendo 3DS was kinda looking that way earlier this year ... but things are improving). There was some fear about prospective Kinect buyers that it would fail miserably and they would have wasted $150. No need to worry. As shown above, Kinect is selling just fine and Microsoft isn't going to abandon it.
Considering that the next big Xbox 360 dashboard update was built with Kinect in mind (it still works with normal controls just fine, don't worry), Kinect is going to be around for quite a while.
Kinect Hardware
Check out our Kinect Buyer's Guide for everything you need to know about the hardware. This Holiday season, Kinect is available in a stand-alone package with Kinect Adventures game for $150 (Xbox 360 system required, obviously) as well as a hardware bundle with a 250GB Xbox 360 system along with Kinect Adventures and a download code for the Carnival Games: Monkey See, Monkey Do game for $399. A wonderfully fabulous Kinect Star Wars Xbox 360 bundle was supposed to hit Fall 2011 as well, but the Kinect Star Wars game was delayed which put the hardware bundle on hold as well.
Attitude
One thing that needs to be said about Kinect is that you absolutely get more or less out of it depending on your attitude. If you want to hate it, you'll nitpick every little thing and find lots of reasons to hate it. If you want to love it, it is easy to ignore little problems and just have fun with it. This is why it is easy to find lots of YouTube videos of Kinect games not working right, or people making snarky comments about how awful they think it is. They wanted to hate it from the start so, surprise surprise, they hate it now. You have to keep in mind that there are millions of perfectly happy Kinect owners out there not speaking up about it.
Setup Is Important
Also, proper setup of Kinect is absolutely important. If you don't have enough room for it - some games work okay a 6 feet or so, most games need 8-10 feet in front of your TV to work properly - it isn't going to work very well. Likewise, if you don't calibrate your Kinect with the easy to follow built in calibration tools, it isn't going to work right and isn't going to be very fun. When you have a big enough room - and we do not recommend anyone buy Kinect if they don't have space for it (third party peripherals like the Nyko Zoom that are supposed to make Kinect usable in smaller rooms don't really work) - and calibrate it correctly, Kinect will be accurate and easy to use and, most importantly, fun.
You can tell how important setup is just by looking at professional reviews of Kinect games. They typically vary pretty widely in terms of score and overall tone from one site to the next, and it is easy to tell which reviewers had their Kinect set up properly and which ones didn't. Just for the record, we like to think we have a well-calibrated Kinect setup and our reviews are accurate and consistent.
The Games
But all of this is just rhetoric. What about the real reason why you should get a Kinect - the games? The 2011 Holiday season is very busy with new Kinect games, and 2012 is going to be full of new releases as well. An interesting thing to note is that more and more games are coming out with control schemes that let you use both a regular controller and Kinect at the same time. Forza Motorsport4 uses it for head tracking during races, Halo CE Anniversary has a bunch of Kinect voice controls, and 2012 releases Mass Effect 3 and Ghost Recon Future Soldier, among others, will carry the "Better With Kinect" branding that lets you play normally with a controller, but also use Kinect for extra options.
Kinect-only games are the main attraction, of course, so what are they like now with an extra year of development? Improved in just about every way. Developers and publishers have learned from what did and didn't work as far as menus and gameplay interfaces go, and the second generation of Kinect titles are generally head and shoulders above what launched last year.
Dancing Games - Just Dance 3 and Dance Central 2 are both fantastic dancing games. The kid-focused Just Dance Kids 2 from Ubisoft is also coming along with Nickelodeon Dance is on the way from 2K Play. Ubisoft is also publishing The Black Eyed Peas Experience as well.
Action games - The Gunstringer is amazingly fully-featured and super fun and even comes with free DLC and a download code for Fruit Ninja Kinect (which is honestly worth $10 on XBLA by itself).
Survival Horror - Rise of Nightmares is the first "M" for Mature rated Kinect game, and while it does have some quirks and isn't exactly a great game, it is still fun if only because it is the first survival horror Kinect game.
Virtual Pets - Kinectimals was one of our favorite launch games, and the Now With Bears expansion adds several hours of solid new content. It is so cute and saccharine sweet it might give you diabetes, but it is amazingly fun. Fantastic Pets is another solid virtual pet game.
Fitness - Fitness games include the solid UFC Personal Trainer (not a fighting trainer, just a fitness game) and Ubisoft's follow-up to the best Kinect workout game at launch, Your Shape Fitness Evolved 2012. Jillian Michaels Fitness Adventure is also on the way. You might also consider Body And Brain Connection, which released earlier this year.
Kid-Friendly - There are also a lot of kid-focused games such as Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster, PowerUp Heroes, and more based on other kid movies and licenses.
Sports - Also coming are a couple of sequels to sports titles released last Fall - Kinect Sports Season 2 (no worries on whether it'll be good) and MotionSports: Adrenaline. The original MostionSports was pretty rough, save for one part (hang gliding) and it seems like Ubisoft is focusing more on that extreme sports angle with Adrenaline. We're hopeful.
Kinect Disneyland Adventures - Kinect Disneyland Adventures looks like one of the most crazy fun Kinect titles yet. You literally get to explore every square inch of Disneyland and even go on rides. I'm a grown man and I'm excited about it.
There's More - There are a couple dozen more Kinect games hitting this Holiday season ranging from classic game shows like The Price is Right and Family Feud, hunting and fishing games, kid movie games, a Grease dancing game, and much more. See a fairly complete listing of Fall 2011 Kinect games here. There is also a long list of previously released titles not covered in this article which have likely seen price drops. Check out our Kinect Game Reviews section for reviews of Kinect games already out and we'll be adding more new reviews every week as well.
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