If PDP's official Kinect TV mount is a bit too pricey for you, Instructables user Riffraff67 has designed a sort of shelf for the Kinect that uses about $10 worth of materials and about 15 minutes' worth of labor.
It might look, well, insane, consisting of a metal plate (in the example, a "handicap" sign), a bit of PVC pipe, and Velcro, but it appears to fulfill its function of putting a flat surface on the top of your TV. Besides, nobody'd be able to tell you had instituted such an unorthodox solution unless they peeked behind the TV, and then they'd probably just be impressed by the combination of thrift and cleverness it suggests.
Cliff Bleszinski has curb-stomped the rumor of Kinect functionality appearing in Gears of War 3. Responding to a report by IGN that suggested motion-control features would emerge in a Gears of War game, the Epic Games developer said on his Twitter: "No Kinect in Gears of War 3."
The IGN piece did leave some wiggle room for itself, noting that it "cannot clarify whether or not this is an all-new Gears of War for Kinect or if it's an existing Gears of War game, retro-fitted for the camera controller." The reveal will apparently be made at the Spike TV Video Games Awards. Master of WORLD EXCLUSIVES, Geoff Keighley, has already started to hype the show's "world premiere announcements," teasing two earlier reveals set for Wednesday.
If Microsoft wants to combine Gears of War with some optional Kinect functionality, it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to get more core gamers interested in the peripheral, which is a little too family friendly with its catalog at the moment. However, if we don't get a Tickle-Me Dominic[TM] minigame, we'll consider any Kinect/Gears crossover a failure.
#xbox360
Epic Games' beefed up Xbox 360 shooter series may be adding a little motion control to its Locust-chainsawing action, according to one report that says Gears of War is getting Kinect enabled. More »
Wondering if Kinect for Xbox 360 has the momentum to reach that recently revised estimate of 5 million sensors sold by year's end? According to some just-released stats, Microsoft is "on track" to do just that. Since the controller-free camera launched just over 10 days ago, more than 1 million units have been sold according to numbers released by Microsoft. "This is a great start to the holiday season," Xbox chief Don Mattrick said (ostensibly to the marketing person who made this press release) continuing, "and we will continue to work with our retailer partners to keep pace with high demand and deliver against our plan to sell more than 5 million Kinect sensors worldwide by the end of this year."
With Black Friday - the busiest shopping day of the year - just around the calendar-shaped corner, Microsoft must expect to move an awful lot of Kinect units if it hopes to hit 5 million in just under seven weeks.
#corporategloating
Microsoft says it has already sold one million Kinect sensors to Xbox 360 owners since the add-on for the console launched in the U.S. earlier this month. More »
Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Max Payne and, most recently, Alan Wake, is on the hunt for some new talent to add to its ranks -- including a programmer that will preferably have "experience on motion-control technology (e.g. Kinect)." While it's entirely possible that the developer simply wants someone on staff who has mad Dance Central skills, the more likely motivation would be that it's looking to be prepared for when (or if) it decides to develop a game that incorporates motion controls.
We're going to suggest that Remedy give this guy a ring. That is, if the company gets tapped to make a Star Wars title that will let players project holograms of themselves into it and bark orders at Lord Vader, Emperor style.
The holiday season brings all kinds of happy traditions. For us, those traditions include dusting off the rarely used "old-navy" tag. Like last year, the clothing retailer is offering a free Harmonix game with a $25 purchase on Black Friday. This year, the Harmonix game in question is Kinect standout Dance Central.
If you're a Kinect owner interested in this offer, and you need some pants or something, we suggest getting to your local store long before it opens at midnight on Friday, November 26 (or Saturday in Canada). We heard reports last year that the free games were limited to the first 25 shoppers to come in. The good news is that if you wait in line and miss out on a copy, you won't feel much like dancing anyway. So that kind of works out.
Would you care to see the clever, combined output of Kinect's depth recognition and its video capture? The 3D effect is incomplete, since the camera can only see from one angle, but it offers a fascinating look at Kinect's capabilities.
#clips
You've no doubt heard (or even seen) how Kinect works, by projecting thousands of points of infrared light around a room. Now see what it can do once it takes all that information in. More »
#marketing
Speaking at an investor's conference on Thursday, a Microsoft executive offered that Kinect not only knows how many are in the room when an ad's shown, but what kind of team colors they might be wearing. Uh-oh. More »
Based on a recent teardown conducted by UBM TechInsights, it looks like the most expensive part of Microsoft's Kinect is the box it comes in. According to UBM TechInsights, the Kinect contains about $56 worth of hardware. Around $17 of that cost is attributed to the PrimeSense motion detection system, including the microphones, cameras and processor.
Of course, the $56 figure doesn't include manufacturing costs (not to mention some undoubtedly massive marketing costs). It's also worth noting that UBM's assessment is just an estimate and only Microsoft knows the real cost. Still, assuming the figure is even close to accurate, it would seem Microsoft makes an impressive chunk of change from the $150 price.
Just a couple of days after the release of an open-source Kinect driver, coder floemuc has developed a proof-of-concept PC application for the sensor. In the video after the break, floemuc uses Kinect to track his hand movements, allowing him to manipulate and resize photos. He hasn't released the software, unfortunately. "I thought I'd get the mandatory picture-browsing stuff done," he said in the YouTube description, "so it's out of the way and everybody can focus on more interesting things."
It's nice to find out that people are thinking about using Kinect to do the cool Minority Report stuff, instead of just the gross ad-personalization bits.
Kinect isn't just a new way for you to interact with your Xbox, it could become a new way for Microsoft's advertising division to gather targeted data about your family. We're not talking about some tinfoil-hat conspiracy theory -- Microsoft's Dennis Durkin postulated such a future at the BMO Capital Markets conference yesterday.
"Over time," he said, the Kinect camera's ability to distinguish between different users, and therefore tailor content to each user, will "help us be more targeted about what content choices we present; what advertising we present; how we get better feedback and data; about how many people are in a room when an advertisement is shown; how many people are in a room when a game is being played." Theoretically, the camera could also be able to measure the level of interest in a particular game or program, explained Durkin, based on factors like which jerseys viewers are wearing (in the case of a sporting event).
It's important to note that this kind of data collecting is not actually happening yet. There's still plenty of time to order Joystiq Publishing's upcoming product: the Kinect Privacy Shroud. Simply drape the Kinect Privacy Shroud over the camera and go about your life as usual without fear of being targeted by invasive advertising. Oh, and learn sign language, because Kinect can hear you too.
#kinect
When the Wii was launched, gamers got hurt. They whacked their TVs, their friends and themselves with the Wii Remote, which prompted Nintendo to make a protective jacket for the remotes. Likewise, Kinect players are getting hurt. Is Microsoft giving out protective body suits? More »
#xbox360
Now that Kinect has been cracked open so that anyone with a PC (or Mac) can mess around with its code, people are free to improve on Microsoft's own code. Like this guy, who has "multitouch" working on the camera. More »
#microsoft
The Xbox 360's fancy motion-sensing camera Kinect may cost you $149, but according to a report from UBM Tech Insights, it costs Microsoft a whole lot less. More »
#kinect
! Chris Erickson's brother found himself without the use of his right arm following a tragic accident, but that hasn't stopped him from enjoying Xbox 360 Kinect games. More »
#xbox360
When I first unpacked the Kinect, the new controller-free motion-capture system for Xbox 360, I thought how awesome it would be to play with my daughter. She's 2 1/2 (going on 14). More »
#microsoft
With a (mostly) disappointing launch lineup and some niggling problems, it's easy to get down on Microsoft's Kinect. Try sparing a thought, though, for the parents of a four year-old autistic boy, for which it's been a revelation. More »
#xbox360
Adafruit, which laid a $3,000 bounty for the first open source driver for the Kinect, has declared a winner. "Hector" delivered the goods, verified as workable by a third party in the hacking community. More »
#gameface
The UK pop singer responsible for the English theme song to Final Fantasy XIII, Leona Lewis helped launch Kinect in England yesterday during an event at the Natural History Museum. More »
Well, that didn't take very long. Just two days after NUI Group's AlexP announced that he had managed to access Kinect's functionality via PC, a lone hacker by the name of Hector Martin has managed the same thing. What's more, Martin has openly released his code to the public. NUI Group, for what it's worth, is busy creating a Kinect SDK and will release it once the group receives a certain level of monetary donations.
See Martin's results after the break. For those brave enough (and good enough with code), Martin's Kinect driver can be downloaded here. Keep in mind that the driver does little more than display what the Kinect "sees" at this point, specifically the RGB and depth-sensing camera feeds. Without software to utilize it, the driver is essentially just a fun party trick ... for now.
#review
In the classic boxing movie Rocky II, Rocky Balboa learned to beat better fighters by chasing a chicken. As an instrument for simulating face-pummeling and rib-cracking, Fighters Uncaged — the first Kinect fighting game! — is only slightly less ridiculous. More »
#xbox360
The future that we see in science fiction promises that we will soon be able to trash our Clappers and start activating our favorite household electronics with our voice. But there are limits today. Blame Earth. More »
#retail
This won't be much of a surprise to anyone who's been keeping tabs on the mainstream media and the general public's reaction to both devices, but a GameStop executive reckons Kinect will outsell Move this Christmas. Especially at his house. More »
Creating a functional user interface through Kinect can't be an easy task -- how do you make waving your arms around mean something, after all? Harmonix was confronted with exactly this problem in developing Dance Central, and judging by reviews, the developer figured it out just fine.
So what's the secret? The team had to actually teach players how to gesture, using visual and even aural feedback in the game when players got it right. Developer Ryan Challinor told the Montreal International Games Summit this week that in testing, player swipes varied widely across both speed and position, and so the final solution was to make the players react to the game, rather than programming the game to react to the players.
A few different solutions were prototyped, however, including the utilization of a cursor, which was dragged around the screen and planted in "notches" to choose the game's songs or options. The team also tried to get players to interact in 3D space, either "pushing" on virtual buttons or "grabbing" and pulling a scroll wheel around. In the end, Challinor said, simply iterating these ideas was the key to solving the Kinect conundrum: The team implemented idea after idea, and then polished the one that worked best.
Of course, not every development team responsible for the first batch of Kinect games took this approach. At least one studio seemingly went with its first idea, and then made it as raw as possible.
