Kinectimals Message Board

I was looking through my computer for an Animal Crossing image and found this image entitled Animals_PlayDead.jpg. From June 2010, via the good people at Microsoft. I had to share, because, well, this picture is just great. Really sells how.... special... the Kinect is/was. Feel free to annotate it.

#xbox You might think Microsoft's Kinectimals (actually developed by the guys who made Lostwinds), is for kids. It's all cuddles and sunshine. Nunh unh. It's a killer. More »

Build-A-Bear Workshop is teaming up with Microsoft on a Kinectimals Now with Bears build-and-scan promotion. Beginning October 11, Build-A-Bear Workshops and buildabear.com will have four bears (pictured) that you can take home starting at $18.00 (and you don't even have to buy them drinks first). They all include "Microsoft Tag technology," which allows you to scan the cuddly cubs with Kinect and unlock a matching furball in the game.

Beginning October 11, the two companies are also using their muscle on a sweepstakes promotion, in which 100 winners receive a prize pack that includes an Xbox 360 4GB console, a Kinect sensor, Kinectimals Now with Bears and a $100 gift card to Build-A-Bear Workshop. More details will be available on the Build-A-Bear site.

Halloween gatherings are about to get a lot scarier as Kinect owners will be able to inject their world of furry friends with pure ursine terror when Kinectimals Now With Bears! launches on October 11, both as a standalone disc and DLC. What's that? You don't think bears are terrifying? We can only presume then that you've never seen a shaved bear.*

Things get even hairier on Oct. 25 when Kinect Sports: Season Two: Now With Beards sprints its way to store shelves. And no, it's not really called that, we assume it has, you know, the regular number of beards in it. But we can dream, can't we?

*If you were thinking of doing a Google Image Search for "shaved bears" with SafeSearch turned off ... well, maybe just don't do that, OK? Promise us.

Just when we think we're out, they snuggle us back in.

Bears are coming to Kinectmals this fall in the "Bear Island" DLC -- a name that we'd like to point out would be terrifying in practically any other context. In addition to five unique poohs, you'll also get a specially crafted adventure hosted by a new guide, Bumblina. (Because when we go to a place called Bear Island, we want the person responsible for bringing us back alive to have "bumble" right in her name.)

You'll be able to pick up the DLC for $14.99 or buy it alongside the full game in a new retail package that's called ... wait for it ... Kinectimals Now With Bears! An amazing name, to be sure, but it's perhaps even more special because it lead us to the revelation that every game title can be made better if you add "Now With Bears!"

Bear witness:

Batman Arkham City Now With Bears! (Bears aren't a cowardly lot, but they're way superstitious.)
Dance Central Now With Bears! (Imagine that and don't smile.)
Dino Crisis Now With Bears! (Warning to the faint-hearted ... they've mated.)

Go on, try it yourselves!

Sure, Kinectimals may be a blast for your 10-year-old sister-in-law, but what about your 12-year-old nephew? What about your friend's 8-year-old son? What about your very immature sister?

Now there's a 1.52GB demo on Xbox Live Marketplace, available for download to all Gold subscribers, to help you decide. And if you happen to enjoy it as an adult ... well, we won't tell a soul.

#china This year, China is releasing a new controller-free gaming console. New for China, that is, as the world already played this when it was called Kinect. More »

Anyone who picks up a Windows Phone 7 starting today on through the rest of the month can snag a free Xbox 360 game on Microsoft. The contest page lists four eligible games as part of this deal, two of which can only be played with Kinect: Fable 3, Halo: Reach, Kinectimals and Kinect Joy Ride. It's hardly incentive enough to yank anybody down off the fence, but it's a good deal if you were going to get a WP7 handset this month anyway.

#cake This cake featuring a crashed Air Force One is based on a game David Braben's Frontier Developments is making. Their most recent work was the toss-frisbees-at-cute-tigers game Kinectimals. But could this be Braben's reminder of something thought lost, something cooler? More »

We know, we know -- Fur Town is getting kind of lonely these days. All your Kinectimals have been petted and played with so many times and, well, you're getting kinda bored of them. Thankfully, according to an announcement from Jakks Pacific this morning, Microsoft has plans to release "five unique plush animals" in the first wave of Kinectimals stuffed animals coming out in Spring 2011.

Like the King Cheetah and Maltese Tiger included in the game's collector's editions, the plush animals can be scanned into Fur Town and be played with in-game to heart's content. No pricing was given in the announcement -- but can you even put a price on cuteness?

#catvideos My cat has co-starred in a number of stories I've posted about Microsoft's Kinect in the past couple of weeks, mostly by accident. She likes prowling through our house, making cameo appearances in videos I shoot. Not with Kinectimals, though. More »

#spoilers The Halo franchise has infiltrated a Kinect launch game. What kind of gesture-controlled Halo are we talking about? Video spoilers below. More »

#review Don't mistake Kinectimals for a Nintendogs clone. This is the closest the Kinect launch has to a traditional video game, one that eight year old girls are going to coo at. More »

As we divided up the Kinect reviews, Kinectimals just sort of laid there, like the black jelly bean no one wants to take out of the dish. Soon though, it occurred to me that I wouldn't necessarily have to live with the shame of being a grown man who played with an pretend tiger. I snatched up Kinectimals, remembering that I have a Rileigh.

Rileigh is my 10-year-old sister-in-law, but that's not important. The important thing is that she loves the crap out of Kinectimals, and I'm betting your Rileigh will too.

I can haz good virtual pet game?

In response to yesterday's news about early copies of Kinect games locking users out of Xbox Live, GameStop has begun calling up customers to warn them of the issue. Amazon.com forum user Sam Beckett and a Joystiq tipster both reported calls warning them not to play the games before their intended release date; all reports indicate Kinectimals is the only game that's been shipped out early thus far.

Additionally, GameStop customer support is said to not have offered any compensation for the mistake, resulting in at least a week of Xbox Live downtime until the public release of the Xbox 360 fall Dashboard update (read: by November 4) for those affected. We can only hope the potentially affected folks now receiving warning calls from GameStop are also avid Joystiq readers -- for their own safety, of course.

[Thanks Justin!]

#xbox360 Kotaku reader Ken was lucky enough to score an early, pre-launch copy of Kinectimals. Unfortunately, he put that copy of the Kinect cat game in his Xbox 360 to unhappy results. Learn from Ken's harrowing tale. More »

Perhaps you've received Kinect and an early copy of Kinectimals? "Lucky me!" you might say to yourself, thinking of all the tiger petting you're about to get into. You plug in the Kinect, pop in the game tape, and the Xbox prompts you with an update. "Of course!" you say. "For this crazy camera thing I just got!"

Without thinking, you hit "Continue" -- and that's where everything goes wrong. You see, the update it pulls down isn't the most recent. After updating and upon signing into Xbox Live, your newly updated system will tell you that it needs to be updated again, but here's the catch: That update will fail (see above pic). Without that update, you won't be able to sign onto Xbox Live.

Since Kinect (nor its games) isn't officially available until next week, the latest Microsoft could publicly release the Kinect Dashboard update is November 4. This means you're stuck with an early version of the new Dashboard -- without Xbox Live functionality, not to mention Kinect -- until the update becomes available in the next week or so. Hopefully you like couch co-op!

How could this game possibly get more adorable? How about if it came with a plushie tiger?!?

Macy's is bringing the Kinect demo "experience" back to its New York Herald's Square store through October 17, with four titles to test drive. The historic department store will also sell the Xbox 360 with Kinect bundle via its online store beginning November 4. Just don't tell Gimbel's about it.

Retailers are beginning to list limited edition Kinectimals bundles, which include a stuffed animal and a $60 price tag. Noted by Dtoid, Toys R Us has an exclusive "King Cheetah" stuffed kinectimal, while GameStop has the blue "Maltese Tiger" as its exclusive. Neither box comes with a small, adorable child to play the game, so you'll have to obtain one of those through other means.

If the quality of the stuffed animals in the retail box is anything like those given away at the "'Project Natal Experience" during E3, trust that it will not replace Mr. Snuzzlemuffin at bedtime. However, they will look awesome next to that Noble Six statue.

#gamescom2010 Many people played Kinectimals at Microsoft's gameplay day in Germany yesterday, but no one played it with as much skill or heart as our own Michael McWhertor. More »

Okay, so the "Kinect Experience" tour is coming to your town -- or at least within a reasonable driving distance. That said, from July on through the end of October, the Kinect Experience mobile demo tour will stop off in major metropolitan areas across the country, giving gamers an early taste of Kinectimals, Kinect Sports, Kinect Joy Ride, Kinect Adventures and Dance Central -- ahead of the device's November 4 launch.

There are a total of 32 stops on the tour. For the full list of cities and dates, hit the break.

The saga of the ambiguous price point for Microsoft's Kinect continues today with a new hardware bundle from Walmart. For $199.99, shoppers can pre-order the peripheral itself along with one of the device's launch titles, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One, Dance Central, Joy Ride, Kinectimals, Kinect Sports and Kinect Adventures. Shoppers can also grab another game from this list for an additional $60 (or $50 for Harry Potter). The bundle also includes a $30 Walmart eGift Card.

Of course, Microsoft has yet to confirm any pricing details for the motion-sensing peripheral -- still, with that free gift card, Walmart's offer seems like the most cost-effective one to date. Unless, of course, Kinect ends up being cheaper than $150, in which case, just tell us the freaking price already.

#e3 If there comes a day when Kinectimals works, it will be better than Nintendogs. That day is not guaranteed. More »

They may not be LOLcats, but these kitties are pretty adorable.

Skittles the tiger is ready to play.

We're not sure what Kinectimals actually means, but these images might clear things up.