Indie Devs Weigh In About Developing for Kinect

Following Microsoft's recent announcement that they'd be making Kinect development tools available to those making XNA-developed titles for the Xbox Live Indie Games Channel, Eurogamer has gathered some reactions to the announcement from a few indie game developers themselves.

Dutch developer Ronimo Games (Swords and Sandles - WiiWare), sees Kinect's potential, but won't likely be jumping on the development bandwagon anytime soon. "Kinect is extremely cool technology, with lots of potential to bring about new game experiences and get new audiences to start gaming," said co-founder Fabian Akker, before clarifying that the studio's next game won't be utilizing the controller-less peripheral. "For the long term, I'm not sure. I think it requires a lot of work for a small studio like us to make motion games feel really solid and responsive. But if we think of something awesome, I'm sure we'll build it."

Introversion's CEO, Mark Morris, also sees Kinect's potential, but the Darwinia+ developer won't be developing controller-free games in the near future. "Kinect does look interesting, however, given Darwinia+'s poor performance I don't think we'll be working with Microsoft for a while," he said. Morris cited higher development costs as a barrier to developing console titles, especially when compared to PC development costs and post-release promotional options.

Though the responses from indie developers haven't been overwhelmingly positive so far (or negative, for that matter), Trials HD developer RedLynx seems slightly more intrigued by Kinect's potential, provided that makes sense for the game in question.

RedLynx CEO, Tero Virtala, shared his cautiously optimistic thoughts about the possibility of developing Kinect-ready games:

As with every platform and technology, they all have their strengths and limitations and their own target audience. The right game has to be a perfect fit for all that. So probably, as an example, a game like Trials HD, with very precise controls and timing, with related gradual player skill development, might not be the best fit.

But coming up with something new and creative in the RedLynx way? Something that fits the Kinect platform and is really fun? Yes, we could definitely consider doing something like that.