Kinect racing stuff vs playstation 3 racing stuff.

[Agent D.]

Okay, been doing some research, and it's kinda iffy either way, so I'll ask a bunch of mature.....ish gamers instead.

I'm looking into playstation 3 and xbox 360 racing stuff for a friend. More specifically, kinect and move supported racing games. I see that on the ps3 side there is very little (no GT5 support, really?), and on the kinect side the games suck or are just way too childish and silly. So, what recommendations/advice do any of you all have?

[John]

May I ask why you need motion games?  Because even Forza's Kinect support is relegated to very small things (same with GT5's head-tracking stuff).  You're pretty much boned either way.

[Yggdrasil]

LittleBigPlanet Karting?

[Aeolus]

Did Star Wars Kinect also come with a Star Wars Kart mode?

[ZeronHitaro]

In general; this is what I've seen/heard:

Kinect seems to have a slightly higher number of games with racing, from Sonic Free Riders to Star Wars Kinect's Podracing. However either by fault of programming or the Kinect itself they are in general exercises in utmost frustration. In example, Sonic Free Riders is said to be completely unresponsive to Kinect commands and requires very awkward positions to do moves even if the Kinect will register then at all. Podracing is an example of the programing half of the problem. Racing in that game is said to actually be rather intuitive and natural; but the problem is it requires both hands to operate the individual engines despite the fact that special powers/moves are keyed into individual hand motions. As a result anytime you try to do a special move you lose control of one engine and you have to pray for luck.

PS3 Move seems to suffer from more the programming half of the issue than the hardware half. I've heard Move itself seems to be more reliable but the programmers who make games period for it (let alone racing games) don't seem to have a handle on what feels natural for a game to do with them. Racing games in general are so under the radar for Move that I can't even recall any specific examples except for one of the launch titles where you're basically racing downhill on an office chair. The finicky programming basically gives you better odds of winning a game of Craps then skillfully doing anything.

I'm sure you may've heard this before but in all honesty; if your friend wants motion control racing just buy them Mario Kart Wii. They'll thank you for it after they have the misfortune to try any of the above examples.

[Agent D.]

I don't want to go into detail, but basically, it's me helping a friend set this up for his client. They want a racing game, and that's essentially the level of detail I was given, outside of either ps3 and move, or xbox and kinect. If it were my suggestion, get a good game, racing games suck, however, it is not.

Basically though, it's as I read. Controllers are the way to go for racing games, outside of full on steering wheel kits for ps3/360. Either that or mario kart wii.