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I've been
excited about
Microsoft's
new Kinect accessory for the Xbox 360 ever since I
played a demonstration of it last year.
Kinect is
a sophisticated camera and sensor system that allows
users to play games by just making motions in front of
their TV screen or by speaking commands.
Although
Microsoft
clearly developed Kinect as an answer to
Nintendo's
motion-sensing Wii, the software giant has much greater
ambitions for it. Instead of being just a new game
console accessory, Kinect offers a demonstration of how
we might interact with living room electronics and even
our PCs in the future.
I tested
out the system for a week and it works well, albeit with
an occasional lag between my movement and its
corresponding on-screen motion. With nothing in your
hands and nothing underfoot but the floor, you can learn
new dance moves, drive a racing kart, get a decent
workout or raft down a raging river with a friend.
And many
of the games for it are a lot of fun. My kids got a kick
out of "Kinect Adventures," which comes in the
box with the system. They enjoyed playing a 3-D version
of the classic "Blockbuster" game, blowing up
on-screen blocks by batting virtual balls at them. They
also had fun making their on-screen raft hop over
obstacles by jumping up and down in front of the screen.
For my
part, I enjoyed "Dance Central" from Harmonix
— the same folks that created "Guitar Hero"
and "
Rock Band
." The game is a natural for Kinect, because it
walks you through sophisticated dance routines step by
step without the annoyance of a controller. I'm never
going to be a dance star, but the game made me at least
feel like I don't have two left feet.
By taking
away the barrier of the game controller, Kinect at its
best allows gamers to completely immerse themselves in
what they are playing. It reminds me of the imaginary
games my best friend and I played when we were kids,
pretending our clothes were superhero uniforms or that
we had light sabers in our hands.
But
Kinect does more than play games. You can use it to
launch applications, rent and watch movies, play music
and tune in a live sporting event using gestures or
spoken commands. As such, Kinect offers a glimpse of how
we might one day just wave at the TV to change the
channel or simply tell it what we want to watch rather
than trying to find and figure out increasingly
complicated remote controls.
Yet
Kinect often feels like a half-baked beta product. There
are loads of issues that
Microsoft
and its partners need to work through.
For now,
just about every Xbox game will either require Kinect or
will be incompatible with it; there's almost nothing in
between. And even the games that are designed for use
with Kinect don't take full advantage of it.
Ubisoft's
"Your Shape: Fitness Evolved" is a good
example. Unlike the fitness games designed for the Wii
or the PlayStation 3, you don't have to use any kind of
controller or platform; you just stand in front of the
screen and mimic the movements of your virtual trainer.
That works well, but there were many points at which I
wished the game tapped into Kinect's voice-recognition
abilities. Instead of being able to just tell the system
my weight or that I'm a male, I had to try to touch tiny
on-screen buttons by waving my hand in the air. I almost
wished I could just use a physical controller.
But it's
not just the games that don't fully embrace Kinect. The
Xbox system as a whole supports it only halfheartedly.
You can't
use Kinect to navigate the Xbox's main screen. Instead,
Microsoft
has created a special Kinect area with only a handful of
applications and options. Many popular features or
settings are unavailable. If you want to access the Xbox
Live marketplace, watch a movie on
Netflix
or log into Facebook on the Xbox 360, you need to grab
your controller.
Even in
the Kinect hub, the use of Kinect features is
inconsistent. You can use your voice to specify which
videos to watch in the ESPN application, but you can't
use your voice to search for a movie or find a song in
the Zune application. Instead, you have to wave at the
screen. If your couch or seat isn't positioned directly
in front of the Kinect sensor, you have to constantly
stand up to interact with it, even if you just want to
watch a movie.
In
testing Kinect applications and games, I often found
myself bouncing back and forth between using gestures,
my voice or even the traditional controller, not because
I wanted to, but because certain screens would demand
that I interact with them in particular ways. The result
was that the interface was a frustrating mess.
Kinect is
brand-new, so it's not surprising that
Microsoft
and its partners are still trying to figure out how to
best use it. I hope they do that soon, because it would
be a shame to let Kinect's potential go to waste.
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