MS plans to court the casual, core, and middle with Kinect
Microsoft Europe's interactive entertainment vice president, Chris Lewis, has said that the company's confident Kintec will appeal to not only the core and causal gamers - but the middle of the road folks as well.
Speaking in an interview with VG247 during E3, Lewis said that there is a middle ground with Kinect for the folks that are not core, yet not causal.
"I think that many of the Kinetc experiences will serve that community very well," he told us. "Suffice it to say, we’re very targeted about who we want to get to. We do heaps of consumer research, where we wheel hundreds of people in and let them see the experience. So we know, in terms of age range, that we need to appeal to teenage girls. We know we need to appeal to a wider landscape of age groups.
'What we’re seeing is people really flocking to that experience and along with people in those age groups (the middle)".
Microsoft plans to do this with not only first-party titles, but with games from third-parties as well - ones that could possible provide a more hybrid experience to the consumer.
"I’m really glad that in many ways, some of the stand outs from the Kinect for 360 experience at the press conference were actually Ubisoft and Harmonix products," he admitted. "That’s not because I want them to beat out our games, but I think that what that does is give people a taste of just how excited the developers are – the third-party partners are – for what this could mean for them. So I quite like the fact that, that sort of crescendo experience seems to be synonymous with those two guys as much as it is with us.
"Now, yes, it was great to see people’s reaction to Kinectimals and our own sports avatar title as well, but yes, we’ve got a lot coming from our studios and indeed our third-party publishers.
"But I also think there will some hybrid experiences where it’s more natural to spend your time with a controller, but occasionally you may want a hybrid experience with voice gesture or hand movement to compliment that".
You can read our full interview with Lewis through the link.