At the recent E3 show, Microsoft introduced the new motion-detecting, add-on accessory for the Xbox 360 now dubbed “Kinect”. This new addition for the 360 allows games that have been developed for Kinect to detect a players movements and translate those movements into the game. Microsoft showed some fairly impressive demonstrations of playing different Kinect games that are due to come out when the new peripheral ships in November. But, like most company demonstrations of forthcoming technology, the Kinect demos were fairly scripted and run by Microsoft employees or evangelists.
One of the most intriguing features of the Kinect sensor is its ability to track more than one person at a time. This was demonstrated in the new game Kinectimals and the flagship game pack that will ship with the Kinect called Kinect Adventures (similar to the Wii Sports pack that shipped with the Wii – it is tailor made to show of the best of the technology). In both of these games, two players can interact in the game play with each other and with avatars in the game. Microsoft claims that Kinect is able to track even more players, but they don’t say what the upper limit would be. And nobody seems to have seen a working demonstration of more than two players being tracked in a game. In fact, people are beginning to questions whether many of the games that will be available when the product is launched will even be able to track two players at once.
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