Wonder what Xbox One exclusive, and we mean true exclusive, not a console exclusive, ended up as the highest-rated game on Metacritic? Well, it’s Fru. Fru is a Kinect-based game which focuses on exploration and creating that sense of wonder when you traverse the environment.
I was talking to the developer about this earlier and we disussed how the highest-rated game on Xbox One was a Kinect title, a peripheral Microsoft isn’t focusing on anymore. Gamers crave new experiences and I think Microsoft should’ve kept on aggressively supporting the peripheral because it can lead to gems like Fru. As Spencer said recently, gaming evolves only when companies take risks. I think supporting Kinect and bundling it with the new Xbox One S, maybe for free, would’ve led to more unique games like Fru because developers would’ve had an established base of tens of millions rather than only a couple million. That creates more incentive to support the device because it mitigates the risk you run of not having enough customers who can even play your game.
Have you played Fru? How do you like it? Let us know. It’s a great puzzle-platform where you have to use your body to reveal platforms and alter the world so the little character can pass.
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.