Chris Alexander
3rd November, 2010
Kinect is Microsoft’s new add-on for the Xbox 360, coming out on November 10th. It is a “controllerless controller” - or a “motion controller”, depending on how you want to look at it. It is in a similar vein to the Nintendo Wii’s controller or the Playstation Move, but with an extra - and awesome - twist; you don’t need to use a controller at all.
To play games with Kinect, all you need to do is place yourself in front of the TV with the Kinect sensor device aimed at you, and you’re good to go. Let the extremely complex hardware and software behind the games take over, and just interact with the games in an entirely intuitive and natural way. I’m going to write more about the technical details behind Kinect in another post, for the Robotics nerds out there!
So below I’ve embedded two videos of Kinect gameplay. The first of these is a look at a bit of in-game footage, some explanation as to how Kinect is to use and play with, and a tiny bit of technical detail (not much I promise). Following up from that is a video of the Windows Phone 7 competition at #ukpdc10, where @Daniel_Parker walked off with a Windows Phone 7 having run 2x100m.