MS to Kinect up UK in November
Motion control and more
Microsoft's Kinect will come to Blighty on 10 November, the Xbox maker revealed this morning.
The announcement, made at the Gamescon show, says it all - you know the rest: Wii-style motion control for Xbox 360 with added webcam-filmed put-you-in-the-game and player tracking elements. You get voice and gesture control too.
Kinect's launch will see the arrival of 15 titles able to make use of the tech, including Kinect Adventures, a showcase for what the system can do.
XBox 360 users can buy the Kinect / Kinect Adventures bundle for £130. Kinect will also be bundled with the upcoming 4GB Xbox 360 for £250. Games cost £40. ®
Review Slim Xbox 360 250GB
COMMENTS
It can only play 2 player too.
From the original 4.
However is some bizzare Microsoft marketing spin, it can "recognise" 6 players, even thou only 2 can play....
It's pretty easy to confuse Xbox owners, so I can see why Microsoft have pulled out this marketing stunt.
Are you sitting comfortably?
Bring on the fanbois.
Sitting/standing... I thought all this gesture stuff was about standing and waving about anyhow? playing tennis sitting down? Playing bowling sitting down? Why is sitting down and gesturing apparently the killer app all of a sudden?
Kinect will win where the others fail - in analysing your movement without having to hold on to a remote control. Dance Central will shift a shed load of units, no question; other games will follow.
It's too late to the party to usurp the Wii's dominance, but I really can't see the Playstation Move control being anymore than a me-too copy of the Wii.
Kinect is genuinely doing something different to the Wii & Move.
Not wii style motion control
The Kinect uses a camera for full / partial body motion detection. There is no remote control involved at all.
The PS Move is more similar to the Wii style controller, although the camera is on TV rather than in the controller like the Wii. The Move is more accurate than the
Of Kinect and Move, expect Kinect to be strictly limited to party / casual games. The Move is likely to get casual and hardcore title support.
Eyetoy also demonstrates the issues
I have Eyepet and it's a cute game, but dear god can be it frustrating at times. If the lighting isn't perfect (full natural light), your Eyepet will stare on dumbly as you furiously gesture for the Nth time to no avail. Or you will draw a lovely picture of a car for your pet to copy and the low light means the game will turn into a disjointed series of squiggles.
All these issues will affect Kinect and more besides. Kinect is bound to work better at motion tracking thanks to IR CCDs but it will still be laggy, occasionally ignore or misinterpret gestures, get confused by the sofa or lighting or clothes or people walking around or whatever.
Take a look at the atrocious Kinect mode for the Harry Potter 7 game to see what the limits of this system are likely to be.
The Move will face some of the same issues to a lesser degree. After all it uses an Eyetoy too so lighting could affect the tracking. Where Sony seem to have been smart is in putting a big glowing ball on the controller.That makes it easy to work out its distance with standard trig and the big glowing ball makes it obvious where it is, but there may still be conditions where it doesn't register properly.
Date
10 November? That is good news - it almost guarantees that we will see it in NZ by this time next year, or less than 12 months after that.
