#move
A top engineer for the PlayStation Move backhanded Kinect's upcoming Star Wars game as "scripted," called its notorious E3 demo "faked," and said a Star Wars Move game will "be damn better than Kinect's." Such a game hasn't been announced. More »
#culturesmash
Microsoft doesn't view Kinect simply as just some peripheral. It's as important as a console. That's why the company poured millions into launching Kinect. And as expected, Xbox 360 sales saw a spike in Japan. More »
#xbox360
We've seen some truly astounding things being done with Microsoft's Kinect motion-control camera in the month since its release. It's a shame, then, that none of them have had anything to do with video games. More »
Homebrew developers continue to do much more interesting things with the Kinect sensor than have been done in any of the retail games so far. Two recent projects manage to use the sensor for proof-of-concept programs that are simultaneously sophisticated and kind of juvenile.
Dan Wilcox rigged up Kinect to see a human body and estimate approximately where the chest area would be on that body ... and then display either a bra or pasties over that area. Of course it's called "Titty Tracker." And Robert "Flight404" Hodgin created a program that generates a 3D model of the person in view of the Kinect, and then distorts that model to create some kind of puffy monster. The point isn't to create nightmare fuel, it's just proof of the open-source Cinder software's ability to access Kinect data.
Other hacks can be found in this roundup, including one that renders people entirely in horizontal white lines, one that uses movement with a MIDI controller to turn the Kinect into a sort of theremin and a head-tracking program.
#clips
While Namco didn't do a stand alone Pac-Man title for Kinect, the Tokyo-based game company does have a special cameo for pellet muncher in its new brain training game, Brain & Body Connection. More »
#xbox360
The Xbox 360's Kinect sensor can already track the movement of your head, your hands, your knees — officially — but leaving it to the amateurs to hack it so that it can track breasts. More »
During a demonstration of Dr. Kawashima's Body and Brain Connection, we experienced an odd Kinect Pac-Man minigame. Now, you can see the oddness for yourself. It's not Pac-Man CE by any means, but it is another weird variant of the 30-year-old game.
#kinect
A dude named "Butch" waited two days to be first in line for Kinect's Tokyo launch. He camped out on the street in a cardboard box painted "Xbox 360". Too bad his room isn't much bigger. More »
You're in for quite the piping-hot treat of justice today, as the Xbox 360 Fancast crew find themselves in rare form for the 190th episode of this podcasting institution. There's plenty of punny taglines for our coffee-themed super hero we've concocted in our noggins, but there's also talk of this Xbox 360 video games console thing, as well -- specifically, about how well Kinect has been doing and how much fun it is to stab your friends. Download and listen, lest you allow the Borgia to win!
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3)
[Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in Zune Marketplace (MP3)
[RSS MP3] Add the Xbox 360 Fanboy Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly
Hosts: Richard Mitchell (SenseiRAM, @senseiram), Alexander Sliwinski (Sli Xander, @xandersliwinski) and Dave Hinkle (KnifefightYaDad, @davehinkle)
Music: Intro/Outro: "Electromooq" by Uma Floresta; Break: "Musow" by Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba
#clips
We've seen some fun and sometimes funky homebrewed uses of Kinect for the Xbox 360, thanks to the release of open source drivers for Microsoft's camera sensor, but how many of those apps support house cats? This one does. More »
Get out your bright red codpiece for this week's Dance Central DLC. Cameo's "Word Up!," whose video features the aforementioned junk accoutrement, is one of the three songs that will be available for your download-and-dance pleasure tomorrow, November 23.
The other two songs include Tag Team's classic "Whoomp! There It Is" and The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling." We've included links to each song's music video after the break, so you can learn some of the moves already associated with the songs, which will likely be worked into the Central routines. For example, the LeVar Burton Seethe.
#xbox360
When people first started talking about messing around with the insides of the Kinect, Microsoft played bad cop, making legal threats. Thankfully, things have calmed down since then. More »
#clips
Star Wars Kid, one of the internet's earliest celebrities, had to do his lightsaber combat the hard way. Now, with Kinect and a computer, anyone can look like the world's biggest Star Wars nerd. More »
#clips
This cool demonstration by Design I/O, which produces "interactive installations" shows the Kinect being used to project animated hand puppets that respond to the user's movements. Design I/O built it in a day using open-source Kinect drivers. More »
#kinect
We've seen Kinect do some pretty interesting things these past few weeks, but ironically, the most exciting thing we've seen so far is simply using the camera to control Microsoft's Windows 7. More »
This Kinect-based prototype should be relevant to your interests, particularly in how it allows the user to manipulate and find expression in a virtual puppet. Projected against a wall, a wide-eyed bird copies the movements of Emily Gobeille's arm, much like a shadow would. As Kinect tracks the silhouette formed by her shoulder, elbow and wrist, the bird can be made to look around and even squawk.
The video, submitted by Design I/O, shows impressive tracking accuracy from Kinect (right down to the shape and position of the hand), and yet another interesting application that you won't find in the camera's batch of launch games. Designer Theo Watson noted in the video's comments: "it allows for really easy person detection and a cleaner silhouette. with a regular IR camera we would have to worry about the color of the clothes people are wearing, or do backlighting with IR lamps. The Kinect also gives us the z distance of each joint - which means we could in theory have the puppet turn to face the viewer :)"
And you'd be staring into the future of gaming, folks. Imagine playing UFO Catcher as the claw and winning every time!
#kinect
Project Draco is basically Panzer Dragoon for the Xbox 360's Kinect. It's even made by the same guy. First revealed at this year's Tokyo Game Show, though, it's only today we get our first proper look at the game. More »
#china
As Microsoft and Sony launch their motion peripherals, Chinese companies are demoing their own motion controls. Whether it's the Tigan Youxi or the eBox, China is mixing and matching where it seems fit. Take the i-dong, for example. More »
#kinect
On the left of your screen, Sports Champions for the PlayStation Move. On the right, Dance Central for Kinect. And in the middle? One man trying to play both games at the same time. More »
#japan
American homes can be huge castles, but Japanese homes are, and I quote, rabbit hutches. How are Japanese gamers to know if their matchbox-sized apartment can handle Kinect? This is how. Maybe. More »
Robots are adorable. And sometimes, you just want to gift them the ability to see and learn more about their human creators. That's exactly what MIT's Philipp Robbel has done with a hacked Kinect sensor and an iRobot Create Robot.
"I have an itch to make a Kinect title for Xbox Live." That's what id Software's resident technology guru, John Carmack, told Joystiq during an interview conducted today, though he admits, "I don't even know what I'd want to do yet."
"I can't use Kinect for our real games; there just isn't a place for our current FPSes on there," Carmack admitted. "But it's an interesting technology, and an Xbox Live game would be the perfect platform to do something like that on, at about the same scale of [a game for] an iOS device."
Given that he's "spent his budget" for time away from development work on Rage on consoles and PC developing Rage for iOS, and has a multitude of other projects -- mostly research-related -- simmering, it'll probably some time before Carmack even gets to decide exactly what he'd do for Kinect. Actually making the game is another matter altogether. Still, it's nice to know there's an actual rocket scientist thinking about the possibilities for Microsoft's motion-control tech. Take that, mere robot makers!
#xbox360
Why play games on Kinect when you can hook it up to a robot, teach it how to learn from its surroundings then take your orders with the wave of an arm? More »
#review
What happens when you take the magical world of Harry Potter, mix in a little Gears of War shooting and Splinter Cell stealth gameplay, and shake vigorously? Things go boom. More »
#blackfriday
Well, not entirely free. You've got to spend $25 there first, but the bonus is yours if you do, per the clothing retailer's Black Friday ad. More »
#xbox360
You've seen the kind of cool stuff people can get up to when they hack their Kinect. Now you can too, with this simple rather complex guide. More »
According to Chart-Track, and reported by Eurogamer, Kinect is doing more than getting gamers off the couch; it's moving Xbox 360s off the shelves. The firm declared that sales of the console have surged in the UK since the motion sensor launched in Europe last week. Chart-Track offered no specific numbers, though Eurogamer reports that sales have doubled from the previous week.
Microsoft revealed yesterday that Kinect has sold 1 million units worldwide in its first 10 days of availability. The company noted further that it was "on track" to reach its goal of selling 5 million units by the end of the year.
