XBox Kinect - the experience so far

So you've all heard about it, and not surprising when Microsoft had an advertising budget of $500 million to keep us all informed.  Kinect is the latest XBox 360 add-on to give you gesture control of your Xbox interface, and interactive gaming without the need of a controller.  As I already had a 360 Slim that I purchased earlier in the year, all I needed was the Kinect sensor add-on.  In the box you get the Kinect unit, a power supply that makes the sensor compatible with first generation 360 units, and a copy of Kinect Adventures.

I admit it, it took me a while to get this setup, primarily due to the launch of Call of Duty Back Ops, but also needing to re-tech my house to the living room, since my home office didn't have a big enough space to jump around in.  Hence a further £650 on a new TV which will be reviewed later.

Setting up was easy; place the sensor in front of the TV and connect to the AUX port on the back of the 360S.  This port is a modified USB port which has extra power specifically for the Kinect unit.  Next was the room scan, and here's where I had some difficulties.  My living room is a basic rectangle with two sofas on adjacent walls.  The TV and Kinect unit are on a stand in the corner.  The room dimensions are approximately 5m x 3m, and during the calibration was trying to get us to stand where the sofa was.  Funny, but didn't do the room calibration much good.  User calibration was much better.  We already had XBox profiles, and using the Kinect ID application linked those profiles to the physical characteristics of each player.

Next we moved onto gameplay.  Kinect Adventures is all we have at the moment, and has you jumping around with a variety of games.  You can go rafting through rapids, popping bubbles in zero gravity, and even on a track where you have to duck and jump obstacles.  The technology is good enough to auto-recognise players as they move in and out of the playspace, so a one player game quickly becomes a two player game.  Occasionally it did get this wrong, specifically between my wife and my eldest son, and I think this is something to do with them being close in height, and that William tends to stand in front of Kathy leading to potential sensor confusion.  It's easily overcome in the menus by selecting your avatar.

The only other issue worth commenting about is my 4-year old.  Getting him to stand in the right place for calibration was a nightmare, and what took everyone else just a couple of minutes, took about 25 minutes with Callum.

All-in-all, Kinect is a great piece of kit.  For my wife to say 'it's very clever the way it detects you and instantly updates the in-game player' carries more gravitas than any technology review.  The last major IT revelations for her were BT Vision pause live TV and record from a programme guide, and iPlayer on the iMac.  She also said without prompting that it was way more fun that the Nintendo Wii.  If Kinect can achieve that with just a few hours of gameplay, imagine what's possible with feedback data and a couple of Microsoft pateches.

William had a great idea about the playspace calibration.  He suggested that we should be able to mask off areas in the space that can't be used.  For us Brits with small houses, it kind of makes sense.