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SEGA making hardcore Kinect game

"Sophisticated" title in late 2011 or 2012.

SEGA has revealed that it's working on an "original", "sophisticated" game for Kinect that it thinks will please hardcore gamers more than the current launch line-up for Microsoft's camera controller.

Sega West predident Mike Hayes revealed to CVG that a UK-based technical group, formerly part of SEGA's now-defunct Racing Studio, was working on an idea that should come to fruition in late 2011 or 2012.

"They're sat with their test tubes and bunsen burners and... using the new devices to see what we can do in an original way," Hayes said.

"We've got one good idea and hopefully something will be out the back end of next year, perhaps early 2012, which we think will use the aspects of Kinect a lot more originally and in a more sophisticated way."

Hayes explained that the prominence of Wii-style casual games in the Kinect launch line-up - including SEGA's own Sonic Riders - was due to publishers and developers not having had long to work with Microsoft's device.

"My guess is when we're at E3 next year, more of the features of Kinect will be in use by developers... It is a reasonably complicated piece of kit, therefore it's going to take us longer to use all of those aspects in a game. We're not going to be able to develop something [for the hardcore] in under a year, which is frankly what we've had," Hayes said.

Sony had a head-start in this area, Hayes explained, due to the relative familiarity of the technology and interface of PlayStation Move.

"Move is probably slightly different because we've been involved with that kind of motion control with Wii and to be honest what we did with EyeToy before, so it's probably easier for Sony to show and deliver more right now," he said.

Only Ubisoft showed a credible hardcore game for Kinect at E3, in the shape of Child of Eden - a spiritual successor to SEGA's cult classic Rez, by the same game director, Tetsuya Mizuguchi.