Kinect Message Board

Usually, being the first to do something is a good thing. In the case of Halo: Archetype, a fan-film chronicling the first Spartan to don the MJOLNIR armor, it just means you're the guy who gets shot at most.

Destiny awaits this week in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning...

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One day after his 17th Valentine's Day with Microsoft, director of Xbox Live policy and enforcement Stephen "StepTo" Toulouse will step down from his current position and head out into the unknown. "On the 16th, I'm going to head down to Dallas to visit my family. Then I'm off to JocoCruiseCrazy! I have no other plans beyond that. I'm a free agent!" he said on his personal website today.

Toulouse says the split is amicable, and that he's moving on for "complex and personal" reasons. He's been a Microsoft employee for just under 18 years, starting full-time on April 11, 1994 at the age of 21 (which is a lot more impressive than what most of us were doing at age 21).

It's unclear who will fill his shoes, but we've reached out to Microsoft for comment.

No, "Le Mans" isn't French for "The Dudes" -- it's the name of a city located in northwestern France that has played host to the annual "24 Hours of Lemans" endurance race since 1923. The awesome thing about Le Mans (the race, not the city) is that manufacturers build beautiful, incredibly fast vehicles specifically to handle the event's unique challenges, and those prototypes are the focus of the lastest DLC pack for Forza Motorsport 4.

Well, by "focus" we mean "there's also a Dodge Challenger owned by a UFC dude," but mostly the DLC is about Le Mans' proud racing heritage. Jump past the break for a complete breakdown of the 10 cars your 560 Microsoft Points will earn you when this pack arrives on February 7.

As promised, Microsoft's Kinect for Windows has launched today, bundling together a Kinect unit and a commercial license for the hardware. Microsoft is heavily pitching the bundle squarely toward industries outside video games, suggesting that Kinect should move "beyond the living room into other industries such as education, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail."

As part of this new push, Microsoft is encouraging businesses to take part in the Kinect Accelerator program, which offers the chance for startups to receive funding for innovative Kinect projects.

The Kinect for Windows package retails for $249. The hardware features "advanced speech and audio capabilities" as well as "improved skeletal tracking that enables control over which user is being tracked by the sensor." The unit also features "near mode" which recognizes objects "as close as 40 centimeters in front of the sensor."

Will these improvements be implemented in the console hardware? Is it even possible? We're looking into it.

Repair time this week in Final Fantasy XIII-2...

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Harmonix announced today that Cee Lo's "Forget You" will close out Dance Central 2 DLC for January, with several more tracks to step it up in February.

"Forget You" will be available tomorrow, January 31, for 240 MSP ($2). Beginning February 14 with Michael Franti and Spearhead's "Say Hey (I Love You)," Kelis' "Milkshake" and LMFAO ft. Lauren Bennett and GoonRock's "Party Rock Anthem" will be available each week consecutively thereafter for 240 MSP.

Those who purchased Dance Central 2 from Best Buy should receive a code from the retailer to download "Party Rock Anthem" early. Every day they're shufflin', shufflin'.

While South Korea's cousins to the north are busying themselves with their new glorious leader, the folks in the south's Ilsan districts of Gyeonggi-do are being entranced by American technology. An entire theme park has been created using Microsoft's Kinect tech combined with RFID wristbands that allow attendees to create avatar representations of themselves and move through the park while interacting with its various "attractions."

But what are these attractions, you ask? They're just as bizarre as you might think, with things like "The Ender Mirror" allowing photo-taking powered by smiles, "Live360," which creates a 360-degree video game "with multiple story endings in a huge space," and much more. The park is being touted as "the world's first 4D avatar theme park," which we find hard to argue with. The question then becomes whether the world asked for such a theme park, which we find much, much easier to dispute.

You have to love this Monty Python and the Holy Grail Kinect game, even though we all know that Tim the Enchanter had nothing to do with destroying the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog. Maybe someone will add the Holy Hand Grenade as DLC.

You can learn more about the game's creation here.

#xbox720 Microsoft will upgrade its disc technology for its next Xbox from DVDs to Blu-Ray discs, catching up to rival Sony, games industry sources tell Kotaku. More »

#southkorea Live Park, South Korea's interactive theme park, allows visitors to experience the virtual world with interactive games and instillations. It's video games brought to life or a Minority Report you can experience, minus the pre-crime arrests. More »

Looking for a good reason to become a Call of Duty Elite subscriber? How does access to the Modern Warfare 3 - Roll Call DLC sound? It's out this week on XBLA... for Elitists only.

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#kinect The brainy brains at SCI-Arc and Caltech have designed an entirely solar-powered house that is clean, green, and energy-efficient. It's also remarkably easy to use, thanks to the fact that the entire thing is powered by Xbox's Kinect motion controls. More »

The inescapable dance track of the '90s, C+C Music Factory's "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", works its way to the Dance Central 2 store tomorrow, January 24. The track is priced at 240 MSP ($3) and, as one would expect, has a "hardcore" difficulty.

We'd also like to remind you that Harmonix launched the Dance Central 2 Dance Cam app last week, in case you'd like to upload any 15 seconds of dance elation (or shame, in our case) to the interwebs.

Since last August, Xbox Live has grown by another 5 million members to 40 million in total worldwide, helping to grow Microsoft's second quarter financial earnings in the Xbox division by 15 percent from the previous quarter. So, what did the Xbox division pull in between October 1 and December 31 (its financial "Q2") in terms of actual dollars? About $4.24 billion, says the company in its latest financial earnings statement. Not too shabby!

"In addition to the continued strength of our commercial business, this holiday season was the strongest in Microsoft history, thanks to good sales execution and compelling products like Xbox 360 and Kinect," Microsoft COO Kevin Turner boasts in the release. He's echoing numbers reported by Microsoft just last week during the company's final Consumer Electronics Show Ballmernote, wherein the company announced record sales numbers for the Xbox 360 across 2011, but most especially during the holidays.

Perhaps more notably, the keynote was where no one mentioned a word about any upcoming Xbox 360 successor, despite rumors indicating as much. With numbers like these, though, it's a bit more understandable why Microsoft isn't looking to replace its big seller just yet.

Care to experience a video game version of the London 2012 Olympics, without all those ... hedgehogs? Sega has a product for you too. The publisher announced the release window for its "normal," Olympics game today, London 2012 - The Official Video Game of the Olympic Games. You can compete in the world sports arena in June 2012.

This time, the PS3/Xbox 360 outing will support motion controls via the Move and Kinect for certain events, allowing you to play Kinect-based beach volleyball or shoot at your TV with Move-enhanced rapid fire pistol.

Sega has also added global leaderboards, so you'll actually be competing with other players worldwide, just like some kind of massive sporting event.

Saints Row: The Third fans can put their lives at risk for fun, excitement and entertainment this week with the Genkibowl VII DLC...

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Busta Rhymes is back in the public consciousness thanks in no small part to Chris Brown's hit Look At Me Now, which features Busta Rhymes, Lil Wayne and the most annoying slide-flute synth ever put into a commercial Top 40 hit. What better way to capitalize on the success of this song than by releasing a different, completely unrelated and far less successful song as DLC for your Kinect dancing game?

Busta's 2008 single Don't Touch Me (Throw Da Water On 'Em) hits Dance Central 2 tomorrow for 240 Microsoft Points, featuring choreography by Devin Woolridge and a "Tough" difficulty rating. Let's just hope we don't have to dance as fast as Busta spits his lyrics.

Following the technical difficulties with the first streaming event for the UFC on Xbox Live app, Microsoft has come up with a consolation. Tomorrow's UFC 142 event will be free for those affected by the outages of UFC 141. All you need to do is sign into the app with the affected Gamertag. It should all work out this time ... we hope.

Users affected will also receive a free month of Xbox Live Gold service. "Our hope is that this gesture conveys our sincere apologies, and helps restore confidence in our customers and fans," a Microsoft spokesperson said. UFC 142 will air live from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at 10pm ET on Saturday, January 14.

When a Double Fine rep told us to expect Double Fine Happy Action Theater in February, we didn't really expect it to be the first day of the month, but here we are. Imagine our surprise when Tim Schafer announced the Feb. 1 launch date on Twitter earlier today.

Double Fine head honcho Schafer neglected to include pricing in the Tweet. A rep at CES did tell us it would cost a "reasonable" price. Sadly, that's more of a concept and less of a real, actual price.

We've contacted Double Fine and will update this post accordingly.

The game industry's December 2011 may have been down from the same month last year, but it hasn't brought down spirits at Microsoft. The Redmond-based Xbox 360 manufacturer capped off 2011 by having the number one console for twelve straight months, NPD data reveals.

In December, Microsoft sold more than 1.7 million consoles (déjà vu, anyone?) without brand-new hardware to help push it over the top like last year. Gamers spent $1.5 billion at retail on the Xbox 360 alone during December, and overall Microsoft's share of that $16 billion pie in 2011 came to $6.7 billion -- $2.1 billion on consoles, $4.6 billion on games and accessories.

During its annual (and, this year, final) CES sojourn, Microsoft revealed there are 66 million Xbox 360 consoles out in the world today. Based on the 2011 figures from the NPD, we'd say a lot of them are here in North America. But when will this month-to-month momentum slow down and make way for the impending next generation? Probably around the time we invent robots for boxing.

After years of hearing about Microsoft's poorly hidden plans for offering streaming TV subscriptions through the Xbox 360 (among other devices), Reuters is reporting that those very plans are currently stuck in a holding pattern. According to "people familiar with the discussions," Microsoft built out an infrastructure for delivering television, but upon finding out how much it would cost to deliver currently broadcast-exclusive content, walked away from talks.

"They built Microsoft TV, they demoed it for us, they asked for rate cards but then said 'ooh ah, that's expensive,'" the piece quotes one "senior media executive" as saying with regards to the negotiations. That doesn't mean that the plans are a total wash, just that they're currently not progressing.

Still, some avenues for live television are currently available and coming soon to Microsoft's Xbox 360, including a limited selection from several cable providers, as well as the just announced partnership with Newscorp which will bring Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and more to the console.

Double Fine's next project, Happy Action Theater, just appeared on the floor of CES, right on time according to the Tim Schafer's Twitter account. The game, available in February for a "reasonable" price according to a Microsoft rep, is basically just a collection of 18 different minigames, featuring sandbox-style fun for the younger audience.

But don't let that tame description fool you: Happy Action Theater isn't just a standard minigame collection made for kids. Instead, it appears to be one of the best experiences on Kinect yet, and a pretty perfect marriage of both Double Fine's expertise at finding almost instant fun, and its skill at wringing some really impressive feats out of that Kinect camera.

NanaOn-Sha's spooky Kinect game, Haunt, may have missed its original launch ... erm ... year, but it turns out that it won't be by much. A representative from the studio told Joystiq this evening that the game will be available via Xbox Live Arcade, on January 18 for 800 MS Points ($10).

Haunt is materializing exclusively on XBLA and is the first of several neat Japanese Kinect projects first announced at Tokyo Game Show in 2010.

To say we were taken aback when Double Fine unveiled its Kinect exclusive Xbox Live Arcade title, Double Fine Happy Action Theater, is an understatement. It was due in 2011 but sadly saw a delay. Now it's gearing up to launch next month.

Our man on the ground at CES 2012, Mike Schramm, confirmed the news with a Double Fine representative. Yet, with a February launch planned, why wasn't the game part of next month's House Party promotion? "I would've loved to see it in House Party," the rep told Joystiq. Seems like a perfect fit to us, however the representative went on to say that the target audience for Double Fine Happy Action Theater is between ages 2 and 12, and the target demographic for the House Party promotion is a bit older. We should hope so -- can you imagine a child playing Alan Wake's American Nightmare?

Double Fine Happy Action Theater features 18 different mini-games, including some clones of a classic titles Space Invaders and Breakout. Mike was able to spend some time with the game and will be posting a preview soon, so keep your eye out. In the meanwhile, we suggest watching the debut trailer about a hundred more times.

#kinectrush Microsoft's using CES 2012 to talk up its best-selling motion-sensing peripheral, with its announcement of blockbuster sales and a Windows version of Kinect. Part of that push will be the recently announced Kinect Rush, the all-ages game being developed in partnership with Pixar. More »

With the tile-based facepalming of Windows 8 slowly slouching this way, Microsoft used its CES conference last night to reveal assorted PC-related shenanigans. One of the more interesting – in theory – is a new version of its Kinect motion camera thinger, designed specifically for PC rather than Xbox.(more…)

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer narrowed down the "early 2012" launch window for Kinect on the Windows PC during Microsoft's CES 2012 keynote today: February 1, 2012. The software development kit has been available to programmers and designers since back in June, but of course people have been doing interesting things with Kinect and PCs since the peripheral's launch back in November 2010.

Ballmer didn't divulge pricing, but Amazon is currently pegging Kinect for Windows at $249.99, a full $100 more than the current price of Kinect on Xbox 360 -- hey, there's a different camera in the Windows version, remember?

Microsoft's Major Nelson says Kinect for Windows will only work with computers running the SDK. Neither have commented on compatibility with Windows 8, but we've got troops on the ground in Las Vegas and will try to find out more.

Microsoft has announced that Kinect is coming to Windows on February 1. More to come. More »

Get in some retro action this week with Choplifter HD...

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