Real Talk By: Kimulus

So it is finally here, the Kinect for Xbox 360.  The ultimate update to the Xbox… and I would have to say I agree.  It has been little over a week now and man I have been playing with Kinect everyday and I am very satisfied with the Kinect right now.  The thing that amazed me with Kinect is how surprisingly responsive this was.  The Kinect keeps up with my movements at least 98% of the time.  I had no major issues with the Kinect at all,  all the games I played tracked my movements well and it was very fun.  However one of the major issues with the Kinect is the play space.  I am certain that when it comes to the Kinect not everybody has a large spacious room to play the Kinect.  Fortunate for me, I have the space required to play the Kinect.  Now for the proper spacing, it says you need at least 6 ft of space to play with the Kinect.  I believe that is a total downright lie, unless you’re a little kid.  For me, I needed 11 ft of space between the Kinect and myself, I also needed about 7 ft of space wide.  To own a Kinect is no joke when it comes to the spacing.  People must expect this, they are going to move around a lot and if you have a small room to do that in, you should not purchase the Kinect, for it needs a lot of room to get the proper response.

The set up was very easy.  All I needed to do was plug the Kinect into the Xbox, and then plug the power source into an outlet.  Of course, if you bought the Xbox Kinect package, you do not need a power source for the Kinect because the new Xbox is “Kinect Ready”.  As soon as I set everything up, I was brought to the Kinect user interface.  While playing around with this, the initial feeling you get controlling the dashboard with your hands and your voice is very satisfying.  However the only problem I found with this is holding your hand still to select a feature. You get to select a feature or icon on the Xbox and it has a mini timer and you have to hold your hand perfectly still till the timer is filled up.  The Kinect is very sensitive to movements so even if I budge a little bit of my hand the cursor will move away from the option I am trying to select so it starts the timer process again.  Don’t get me wrong it’s only a 3 second wait, but that is something that was rather annoying for me.  I began to calibrate my Kinect to my room.  It was simple, all you had to do is get this calibration card (which comes with games) and just follow the camera.  However another annoying feature you have to deal with is that you have to do this everytime if you move the Kinect to another place.  The facial recognition features requires calibration also.  I found that this feature is neat, but useless.  Signing in manually is actually faster than to wait for the Kinect to start up and sign you in to recognize your face.  This calibration process is tedious because you have let the Kinect recognize your face from various angles.  Once I got it calibrated it does recognize my face.  However, it does not recognize my face if I am sitting down playing a controller required game.  The facial recognition component of the Kinect is not 100% perfect, but I felt that it’s a little premature for the Kinect.  The voice command part of the Kinect is very solid.  I had no problems what so ever telling it what to do on the Kinect hub (which is like a dashboard for Kinect users).  I had it misunderstood me maybe 5% of the time I used the voice command.  Overall I was very satisfied with this feature.

I can see why Kinect is a mega popular item that was sold out everywhere (at least in my area).  Hardcore gamers should wait a little bit, till Kinect comes up with a game tailors to that audience.  I was a skeptic when it came to the Kinect, but people need to try this out themselves.  Demos are available at Best Buy and other electronic stores I’m sure.  Overall Kinect is tailored towards family and casual gamers.  I loved it because I just like the feeling of moving around while having fun.  Once you get the Kinect, you will not forget the feeling of controlling something with your whole body.  That’s what makes me comeback for the Kinect every day to experience movements and controls that I can make to relay to the game.  I have to tell you it is also an excellent workout.  It offers a whole new dimension to the Xbox.  This is not a Wii copy at all, Kinect is a certified fun.  Sure the Playstation failed with the eyetoy.  But I believe the technology then was too premature to compare to the technology we have now.  The size of the Kinect is about 1/3 of the size of the Xbox itself, so you know it packs a lot of technology.  Overall, I highly recommend the Kinect to casual gamers who want to experience something new…. that is if they can afford it.  It wouldn’t hurt if gamers waited for a price drop in the Kinect.  The pricing of 150 is a little extreme in my book, but like I said, if you can afford it by all means knock yourself out.  I give this:

MF MF MF MF out of Five.

What’s Legit

+Will give you an active mindset.
+Very responsive to movements in games.
+Innovative.
+The future looks bright for the Kinect.

What’s Perpetrating

-Need LOTs of space for the Kinect.
-Pricing is a bit steep.
-Some features are not as responsive at it should be.
-Caters to casual/family gamers only.