Overview
Motion gaming was always of great interest to gamers as it offers the most immersive gaming experience till date, giving gamers the freedom to interact with the game elements more freely than ever before. Recent developments in motion gaming with Nintendo Wii, PlayStation Move and more importantly Xbox Kinect make the experiences even more realistic and kinetic for gamers. While the current generation Kinect has sold even more than 10 million units till date, Microsoft is already working on bringing the next generation Kinect to the market, and there are huge numbers of reasons to believe that it is going to be an awesome device.
Microsoft is planning to release the next version of Kinect with a motion sensor so accurate that it can read our lips! Using the technology, Kinect will be able to improve the voice recognition capabilities as well as the motion sensing. There are strong rumors that the new device will enable various games to lip read the users, detect their emotions, frustrations and the directional orientations of them more accurately. Before you scream and run for cover thinking that this will be your home HAL 9000 sneaking on you, it is just a game console which will be controlled by you and not vice versa.
Pricing and Availability
As there are also rumors of the next Xbox coming out somewhere at the end of next year or at the beginning of 2013, it is most likely that Kinect 2 will also release on the same time. As the gamers are aware of the importance of E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) for significant announcements from both game and console makers, next yearâs expo is going to be very interesting. There are strong indications that Microsoft is going to introduce their new console by E3 2012 and a new version of Kinect will also accompany it. There are no solid indications of pricing yet but it should be around the current price.
Whatâs great?
Microsoft is going to refresh the hardware present in current Kinect model with updating all the internals. Currently the Kinect is limited to a bandwidth of 15~16 MB/s due to the limit imposed by Microsoft as multiple USB based devices can be used on Xbox 360 at once. Kinect 2 is going to change all that with a better depth sensor that is going to be upgraded from the current 320 x 240 pixels limit. As the new sensor will gather more data per second, Kinect 2 will have a faster connection to the Xbox for speedier processing of gather data from depth sensor. The frame rate can also be doubled from the current 30fps to a staggering 60fps which will make the process buttery smooth with more accurate motion sensing. And thatâs not all, the added feature of facial expression tracking will make the device emotion aware and one step forward to a fantastic level of immersion.
As Microsoft wish to bring the Kinect motion sensor to PC, Kinect 2 will finally bridge the gap between Xbox and PC gaming. Kinect 2 will have support for PCs as well as next Xbox devices and that means a lot for the future of PC gaming. The updated depth camera will enable Kinect 2 to identify objects as near as 50 cm and track their motions accurately. Microsoft calls it the âNear Modeâ and it will be hugely useful for PC gamers. Microsoft also released the Kinect SDK for PC which only makes things better for the developers. Older titles can be revived with Kinect support and upcoming titles on PC will contain Kinect support for the enjoyment of gamers.
Whatâs not so great?
While Kinect has a fantastic potential for giving the ultimate gaming experience in either console or PC, there is really a dearth of good games that uses Kinect efficiently. Most of the great games that comes with Kinect support are made by Microsoft and related game studios and significant third party game studio involvement is yet to be seen. While we hope Kinect 2 will be an amazing device, hardware wise, lack of significant gaming titles can worsen the sales.
In current times, privacy issues have been one of the headlines throughout the world. There are tracking software installed on mobile phones, computers etc. that sometimes gather sensitive user information without consent of users and usually without user knowledge. While Kinect 2 promises features like lip reading and such, it might post a huge security risk for the gamers as the collected date can be sold to right companies for advertising and what not.
Things to watch out for
Kinect 2 really has a lot of promises, and most likely going to amaze us in a way that is even more spectacular than the original Kinect. Hugely improved motion sensing, better depth sensor with bigger resolution, faster interfacing with Xbox and PC, emotion tracking, âNear Modeâ â you name it. If the promised features and performance level is achieved by the final marketed Kinect 2, it will definitely steal a lot of thunder for 2012 gadgets.
Verdict
The next version of Kinect 2 is simply mind-blowing on what it promises to deliver and if Microsoft really ships a final product within an accessible price range along with more game studios to develop for Kinect, there will be no stopping it and Kinect 2 can easily become the gadget of the year 2012.
Word around the web
Internet is buzzing with the anticipation of this updated version of already popular Kinect. While there are some crazy rumors about the devices which should be taken with huge grains of salts and sometimes better avoided altogether, the upcoming CES and E3 are the events to be watched out. People are asking for the potential usages of the new technologies which are to be introduced with Kinect 2 as well, and some of them are really impractical and funny.
