Microsoft: new Kinect line-up appeals to more gamers

As expected, Microsoft’s E3 conference showcased a Kinect line-up that seemed to target a varied spread of gamers – certainly a more varied spread than what we saw in last year’s show.

But despite this, Kinect creative director Kudo Tsunoda argues that the platform’s audience hasn’t changed. Instead, he claims that the new line-up does a better job at catering to different tastes.

“(At) the very launch of Kinect, the kind of thing we talked about was, ‘Experiences for everybody’,” said Tsunoda, speaking at a Microsoft-organised developer roundtable.

“And if you just think, ‘everybody’ includes a lot of people – whether that’s core gamers, non-core gamers, or people who’ve never played games before. To me, the people that we’re trying to attract, whoever they’re with – with Kinect or with Xbox – it really hasn’t changed at all. We really do have different types of entertainment, different types of experience for everybody. Whether it’s games, whether it’s movies, whether it’s TV, whether it’s music – all the things you can do with Kinect, it really appeals to all different kinds of people, and that’s kind of the market we set out for at the beginning.

“Again, you just start seeing now, as time goes on, Kinect showing up in a wider variety of experiences. So I don’t think the target customer for Kinect has ever changed as much as, as the technology advances we’re just better at putting it into a much wider variety of things that different people enjoy.”

Then we asked Tsunoda the big question: does the new line-up do a better job of appealing to a variety of gamers, compared to what was shown in 2010?

“Certainly,” he replied. “I think at least you’re tripling the number of experiences that are out there, so at some point that’s going to mean there are more experiences, there are more things for different kinds of people. Again, it’s a wider variety of experiences, and a wider variety of experiences will appeal to a wider variety of customers.

“From the very beginning we understood that… it’s always fun when people talk about core gamers, and what you say a core gamer is. Lots of times core gamers are just people who love technology, innovation, and who are early adopters of new things, and it’s been a conscious effort from the very beginning to make experiences that do appeal across a wide variety of people.

“It’s easy to forget that we’re really only seven months from launch, and you can already see the wide range of experiences that Kinect can deliver. It’s great that we have more experiences, we’re going to appeal to more people, certainly, but that’s always been the plan from the beginning. It’s just as time goes on, you’ll see it more and more.”

What do you think of Kinect’s new line-up?