Microsoft’s grand unveiling of their next huge product, Kinect (also known as Project Natal) just happened at the grand Electronic Entertainment Expo. We knew that the starting price for the Kinect is at $149.99. We also know the Kinect release date is in November 4. Microsoft also demoed how to control your movies, music, games, and other features on Xbox live.
First-time users will want to introduce themselves to Kinect. When you start calibrating your Kinect it asks you to choose a profile you regularly use and it will start what Kinect calls “the biometric setup.” At this moment the camera will be memorizing the shape of your face and body. You’re going to be asked to move around the room so the camera can get a good look at you to remember your features. After that you go back to the dashboard then you can make a gesture to go to the Kinect hub by raising your hand in the air and waiving it, the Kinect will recognize you and sign in to your profile.
When signed onto Xbox live you can raise your hand and a hand icon will appear on the screen as your cursor. You can use both your hand as 2 cursors and go over the app, it will warp to indicate that you’ve selected that app. You can flip thru your pages of apps just by waving your arm left or right to scroll through the pages of apps in your Kinect hub. After you have found what you want just hold your cursor over the app and it will launch it.
You can also use voice commands to launch apps instead of using your hands. Microsoft had this to say about the voice commands: ”if you can read it, you can say it and launch it.” To launch an app like ESPN you can say “Xbox ESPN” and if you change your mind you can say “cancel.” The voice commands sometimes didn’t work at E3 but that might be due to all the noise and people there.
You can also control your movies and music by using voice commands and gestures. Microsoft demoed it at the press conference, and explained that you can say “play”, “pause”, and “next” to control your movies as well as your music that can be played through the new zoom app. Like I said before, you can control movies with gestures as well. If you just want to get to the end of any movie you can just simply raise your arm and move your play position there.
Microsoft assured us that you can sit down while using Kinect. Microsoft would like for the player to be relaxed and enjoy playing Xbox, so you don’t have to be standing every time you want to use it.
Microsoft’s Kinect release date is set for November 4. From what I saw the voice commands and gestures worked better than I thought they would especially in such a loud and crowded place like E3. I’m excited to see Kinect on top of my TV and a bunch of people being awed as I control things with nothing but gestures and voice commands.
