Motion Controls: Everyone is Doing it Wrong

Oh, yes. A Kinect Star Wars Game is coming. And it feature dancing mini-games!

Now that you finished your best Darth Vader 'NOOOOO" impersonation... Not yet?... Now?... OK....

I don't think that Kinect is a flawed tech and therefore not able to do much more interesting things than dance/exercise/mini-games games. Maybe you could say that about the Wii, how the tech behind it was not good enough, but even there I have my doubts. It is more about the lack of disposition of both developers and gamers to explore the tech.

Every Star Wars fan dreamed of fighting with lightsabers and a system who would allow them to swoosh around their plastic swords would be awesome. Or moving your hands and causing Force effects. Since I have no hands-on with the game, I don't know if  you can actually do those things.

But the fact that they felt the need to put dance sections is not encouraging.

Developers have no idea how to be creative with motion controls, so they either do a half-assed job with them or copy what already is successful. Meanwhile, old-time gamers dread motion controls and are in not fair disposition to expend money in them. And the new gamers that were attracted by the Wii and Kinect aren't exactly wanting different experiences.

Sony tried to push their Move as an alternate control for traditional games, but it is hardly working in their favor. Meanwhile the use of voice commands can be done with a headset, which defeats the need for Kinect just for it. All indicating that nobody have any great idea about how to use motion controls in games.

Sure, you probably can point me to n videos of Kinect hacks that are awesome, but can you point me the great ideas used in games? And that is the problem with motion controls. Very few games used it in really creative ways that make every gamer wanting to use it.

And as long developers don't figure a way to use them in appealing games, motion controls will keep being the butt of many jokes.