Want to know what you look like playing Kinect? Check the video posted with this article. Yes, that’s me. As soon as I watched this clip, which was captured and edited automatically while playing track and field games in Kinect Sports, I realized (with some regret) that it must accompany my review of Microsoft’s new controller-less game platform for the Xbox 360 It’s been nearly 18 months since the Redmond-based company first unveiled this innovative new way to interface with games, and in that time there has been plenty of speculation not only regarding its performance but also whether it will make for fun gaming.
Some quick answers: the technology works pretty well most of the time, and – as my foolish, smiling self makes clear – I was obviously having some fun.
But before going into details on the experience, let’s get back to what Kinect is.
The device is a sleek and shiny black bar designed to match the new 250GB version of Microsoft’s console. It contains depth sensing cameras, an RGB camera, and multiple microphones. It is placed above or below your television and sits on a mechanized base that automatically tilts up and down as necessary to frame the action.
The sensors work together to allow players to control onscreen elements with body and voice. As Microsoft’s ads succinctly state, you are the controller. So, make like you’re kicking a ball and your avatar will do the same. Spin an imaginary steering wheel with your hands and watch your onscreen car turn in that direction. It’s that simple.
Kinect makes this sort of control possible by recognizing and delineating joints in the human frame. Step in front of the bar and it will instantly recognize your head, upper arms, forearms, and hands, as well as your torso, thigh, and calves. Put another way, it understands that you – as opposed to a chair or a dog – are a human, and it will interpret specific human movements as commands.
You can walk out of the play area and back in again without undue disruption (games typically pause, then automatically start back up again). Players can switch out with one another with no need to stop the game or re-calibrate the sensors. It can even recognize two players at once for multiplayer games – though be careful; with our eyes trained on the screen, arms flailing and feet shuffling, my daughter and I ended up whacking and bumping into each other more than once.
Which brings us to space requirements. Kinect requires a ton of room. While working through onscreen setup you’ll see a diagram that shows people moving a coffee table, couch, and chairs out of the way in order to play. That is exactly what I had to do. You’ll be leaping left and right, taking steps forward and back, and swinging your arms around (again, I somewhat embarrassedly direct you to the Kinect Sports video for evidence).
I measured the clear space that I felt was necessary to play a variety of games and found it to be a minimum of four metres deep and two metres wide. Your Shape: Fitness Evolved, a fitness game from Ubisoft, required the most depth (I had to move my couch into the kitchen), while playing with two players in Kinect Adventures – a game that had my partner and I steering a raft by shuffling across its deck and avoiding obstacles in a gauntlet by ducking, jumping, and dodging – required the most width. If you live in a suburban home that’s probably not a big deal. For a family like mine that lives in a downtown high-rise, it means we have to move all of our furniture whenever we want to play. In fact, I’m not sure what has made me stiffer: All of the motion based gaming I’ve been doing or moving my furniture around every night for a week.
