Not really better with Kinect

I've had the Kinect sensor for the Xbox 360 for just about a year now, and it's been an amazing addition to my gaming. Whole new genres have appeared, while old favorites have grown and surprised me with new depth. It's created a range of family gaming experiences for us and enhanced the Xbox's role as our household media center. Honestly, I think the success of the Kinect is the main reason why Microsoft has been in no rush to jump into the next console generation. With all of the terrific experiences it has brought us, it's one Microsoft decision with which I totally agree.

Oh, wait, I've made one mistake in that preceding paragraph. Said mistake being that after the first fifteen words, none of it is true.

My experience with the Kinect has been incredibly disappointing; its technical limitations are so great that it frustrates more often than it entertains. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it (thanks, Midnight Box deal) because it hasn't come close to either its marketing claims or the hopes of dad gamers like me who wanted a way to share more gaming time with our families. Its flaws are many, but allow me to enumerate its top issues:

• Physical requirements for the playing space. To be fair, Microsoft has always been pretty upfront about how much room is needed to effectively use Kinect. Our living room is very shallow, so until the Nyko Zoom add-on arrived, I figured we wouldn't be able to use Kinect at all. The Zoom, however, promised a 40% reduction in the necessary square footage, so I took the plunge. Even with the add-on, it's still ridiculous how often we can't quite stand far enough away from the sensor for accurate tracking. Of course, this problem is made even worse by the other major limitation: lighting. I would guess that most people's living rooms are not lit like a television studio, which seems to be the only way the Kinect can really see everything it's supposed to.
• Motion tracking accuracy and movement fidelity. "You are the controller!" promised Microsoft. Um... no. A fuzzy, slow, indistinct version of myself is the controller. In a medium that relies on precise and accurate controls for its audience engagement, the Kinect is akin to finger painting while wearing oven mitts. Any hopes that Kinect would be the new way to play platformers, shooters, and racing games were doomed from the start. I mean, have you tried Joy Ride? No? Well, then you're lucky.
• Lack of promised features. Remember when Microsoft first unveiled Kinect? One of the neat things they focused on was how easy video chat would be, and how many different forms it could take. One nifty application had your Live Avatar basically hosting a talk show with your friends, as the Avatars matched your live movements and speech one-to-one.  Yeah, we're still waiting on that one. Or how about the cool, Minority Report-esque way we could navigate the Dashboard*? Yeah, that works... some of the time. Most of the time it's an exercise in frustration.

The one and only fun, engaging experience I've had with the Kinect has been Double Fine's Happy Action Theater. There are two reasons for this: first, it's perfect for kids to goof around with, as its design is basically a series of party activities and not really "games"; second, it requires only the broadest of movements from the user, so the frustration is kept to an absolute minimum. If it weren't for my daughter and her friends playing that on a regular basis, I'd have tossed out the Kinect long ago.

*Mini-rant: I hate the Xbox 360 Dashboard. I understand why Microsoft has gone in the direction they've chosen, but as someone who uses the 360 primarily for games, it is supremely frustrating that so much of the game functionality is buried beneath all the media center crap. Oh, and the ads. It's sad that Sony's XMB is now so clearly superior to the Xbox dashboard, when its style and structure hasn't changed much since the PS2.