It’s the Kinect’s first anniversary, and doesn’t Microsoft want you to know it.

Our favorite mummery-based-interface device was undoubtedly front and center at Microsoft’s E3 booth; ensconced in its own private booths and orbited by a constellation of lesser stars. (You know, the AAA titles and the best of the Xbox Live aimed at those of us whose reaction to a Fable rail shooter was polite bewilderment.) Then there was the press conference, which may as well have been headlined: “Microsoft Changes Name to Kinectosoft Inc., Makes Kinect Ownership Mandatory.”

Sure, there were mentions of other titles, some remarkably promising (Tomb Raider origin story, anyone?) but Microsoft even felt the need to couple Mass Effect 3, a title which should merit a presentation all on its lonesome, with highly-publicized Kinect functionality that amounted to “shout at the screen and weird your roommates out late at night.” And that’s saying nothing of the new-and-trumpeted interface for the 360’s new television support.

Microsoft is betting big on the Kinect as the Next Big Thing. It’s in their best interest to convince you it’s the future of gaming, seeing as they went through all the trouble of the no-doubt-staggering development costs. But while the Kinect is a fascinating and important piece of technology, when it comes to gaming it’s not just a dead end for innovation – it’s an expensive, much-hyped digression, if not outright regression.

Now, let’s give credit where it’s due. The Kinect, particularly some of the new features publicized in the Kinect Fun Labs, offers developers a host of remarkable new avenues for users to interact with hardware and software alike. Stores have used the Kinect to create virtual fitting rooms, and I’ve no doubt hands-only motion control can be invaluable for all sorts of everyday utility.

But our topic is games, aimed at gamers. And when it comes to games the vast majority of Kinect titles (like other motion controls) are little more than point-and-click affairs awkwardly translated into gestures. Sports and dance titles aside, the Kinect offers gamers no additional forms of interaction or verisimilitude, and in fact allows for less than a conventional controller.

Innovation is a vague term, oft paraded and rarely defined. But I think we all recognize the ways the gaming medium has changed and grown over the decades, and the trend is clear: more. More cinematography, more technical finesse, more complex interactions, more freedom, more game. More functions naturally requires that we have more ways in which to implement them.

And let’s all remember that the big selling point of the Kinect was an act of subtraction- taking away the controller and controlling the game via gestures.

When it comes to gadgets like iPhones and iPods — things with simple, one-dimensional utility, we’re all about less. But nobody’s ever applauded being able to do less in a game. And the funny thing is, the human body- particularly the human body’s hands, which is most of what any motion controller can track- is considerably less expansive in its array of options than a controller.

At E3, I had the chance to watch a host of the upcoming Kinect titles, and almost every time the same thing was readily apparent- the “game” in Kinect games is almost incidental to the experience. Dance Central 2 got by because the screen’s a glorified Simon Says.

But the others? The highly-publicized Star Wars Kinect featured graphics, AI, and movement that would have been embarrassing a decade ago, mated to stiff, artificial gestures that wholly destroyed any pretenses of immersion. It would have probably been more entertaining had we simply flailed our arms and made lightsaber noises. The strange rail-shooter Kinect Disneyland looked like a fitting family affair, but wasn’t much more than an aid to make-believe excursions.

Now, to be fair, I should mention that the undeniable star of the affair, Twisted Pixel’s The Gunstringer, was the exception that proves (as in tests) the rule. See, Gunstringer is essentially the puppet-show presentation of a marionette cowboy. It’s a clever, charming little twist on a rail shooter that the player controls with one hand in a puppet-strings shape to move the titular character, and the other to go “bang bang” after highlighting targets.

In other words, the best, most innovative title for the Kinect was funny because it highlighted that you’re basically just playing Charades. And you paid for the privellege!

Maybe the problem is that there’s no conclusive agreement on what a game is. As this Cracked.com article pointed out, narrative-heavily experiences like L.A Noire and Mass Effect are awkwardly lumped into the same category as Angry Birds, where they have no right to be. We gamers are living in our very own Roman Empire, while the rest of society is still convinced that the equivalent of the hand-axe represents the pinnacle of technological advancement.

Maybe for that portion of the population whose most frequent experience with games is frantically tapping their iPhone screen to get a higher score, being able to do it through interpretative dance before the TV is a massive innovation. But there’s a reason the Kinect- and the Wii before it- have been well-nigh creative dead ends.

Besides, last I checked, Nathan Drake was in better shape than I am. I don’t exactly think running in place to get him to move is going to go very well.