14 DAY TRIAL // Dance Central 3 is expected to launch before the end of the year, and both developer Harmonix and Kinect-maker Microsoft believes that the game has the capacity to create new interest in motion tracking.
Ryan Challinor of Harmonix, who is a designer, coder and engineer at the developer, has told Gamasutra that his team is eager to get the most out of Kinect while avoiding some of the mistakes that others are making when dealing with the tech.
He stated the most common problems with other games was that “once you've done the thing, you don't get the immediate feedback that you're connected with what's happening.
“It's like if you had to punch and then your character punched, versus if you could see your fists being controlled by your actual fists. That's a really important thing to do.”
One of the big issues with motion tracking is latency and Challinor has detailed how Dance Central 3 will try to limit its impact, saying, “We're showing you large live feeds of yourself while you're dancing, we pulse the image to the beat. That helps reinforce the beat a bit and hide the latency. So that's been successful for us.”
The upcoming Harmonix game has also benefited from the fact that the entire experience is linked to music, which is based on patterns and therefore predictable, allowing the developer to have a limited knowledge about the future movements of the player.
Dance Central 3 will be launched exclusively on the Xbox 360 from Microsoft before the end of the year.
The company also plans to deliver Rock Band Blitz during 2012 on the PSN and the XBLA, allowing players to use a simple console controller in order to simulate playing the biggest hits that were delivering in previous titles in the series.
Harmonix have already confirmed that it is working on a number of other titles that are in no way linked to music or dancing.