The off-the-wall and clever experiences often seen only in the indie spectrum may soon be compatible with Kinect.
One of the coolest things to come out of Xbox Live is the Xbox Live Indie Games storefront which technically anybody can release a game to with enough know-how. In the near future, the Kinect lineup could see the likes of games on the storefront such as I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1, Weapon of Choice, or even Breath of Death VII added to it as Microsoft says it hopes to get the tools for indie developers to be able to develop Kinect-compatible titles in their hands soon.
Microsoft Game Studios corporate vice president Phil Spencer told IGN the news when asked if he had plans to incorporate Kinect into its Indie storefront. He said that the new Kinect games shown at the Tokyo Game Show this year were “exciting” because he realized “people can go create a flaming baseball game while somebody else is doing a river rafting game.”
In relation to XBL Indie Games and Kinect compatibility, Spencer said: “When the community will light up, we don’t have a date lined up yet. It’s not that I’m hiding it from you I just don’t know. But getting a broad set of developers supporting our platform at all levels is important to our success.”
Though there isn’t a planned date yet, Spencer says Microsoft isn’t far from putting the Kinect framework in place for indie developers. “I think we’re close…when you can simply drop the things in and go away and it works perfectly, then you’re ready,” he added. “And I think we’re close given we’re so close to shipping.”
The XBL Indie Games store could probably still use some tweaking, but it is an awesome place to browse to find strange and fun experiences for a few bucks. Though I know I’ll own the Kinect someday, if indie developers are able to get their hands on the technology I know I’ll be more apt to drop the dough on one.
As an example of what we may see, Arkedo Studio has already released multiple XBL Indie games including the highly-rated 03 Pixel, and it had a sweet-looking hand-puppet brawler in the works for Kinect at one point. On the other hand, there’s also the pretty awful XBL Indie Game that helps you talk to girls out there, but maybe it’d be more fun as a Kinect title.
Source: IGN
