Kinect Review for Xbox 360

Review of the new Kinect sensor for Xbox 360.

While Sony's PlayStation Move uses the PlayStation Eye camera to detect and measure the location of high-tech and spatially-aware handheld controllers, Kinect has no physical controllers to speak of at all.

Your body is the controller. It's up to the Kinect games and apps to use the camera and microphone to work out what you're doing and what you're saying, and to interpret your commands in the appropriate fashion.

Getting to grips with the controller free experience with Kinect.
Kinect’s setup and calibration process gives you some time to get comfortable with the device. In a series of setup screens, you’re reminded that the camera needs to be two to six feet from the floor, centered above or below your TV. After the Kinect runs a few checks (background noise, speaker noise, microphone calibration), you’re pretty much ready to go unless the device isn’t reading you well, in which case you can enter the Kinect Tuner. Otherwise, you can move on to the dashboard.

Using Kinect to navigate the 360 dashboard, won’t be the same menu structure as someone using a controller. Waving your hand to activate the Kinect or saying “Xbox, Kinect” will take you to the Kinect Hub which is a more limited dashboard menu that offers slides for your Friends list, Achievements, Avatar Editor, ESPN, Zune Marketplace, and more. Jumping into each area is as simple as putting your hand on its slide or using your voice to navigate around.

It's pretty cool to bounce around your 360 using your hands or voice but just know that neither method is as fast or efficient as navigating with a controller, and that for now, you’ll still need a controller handy for specific functions.

Kinect does work better in large spaces as it is recommended to be six to eight feet away from the sensor and can support 2 active players at a time.

It does take a while to get to grips with Kinect. There are some lag issues with some games and the other major battle facing you is to get the hang of a new kind of hand-eye coordination.

Once you've got the hang of it though, Kinect is perfectly accurate enough. If you mess up, you generally feel like it was your fault rather than the game not working properly.

Kinect is not a perfect product but is an impressive piece of technology and is opening up the Xbox 360 to a wider audience. It has some good launch titles and has the potential to produce some revolutionary games.