Microsoft

You Don’t Need Two Arms To Play Kinect

Chris Erickson’s brother found himself without the use of his right arm following a tragic accident, but that hasn’t stopped him from enjoying Xbox 360 Kinect games. Here we see one of the direct benefits of controller-free gaming. He might not do quite as well with some of the more limb-intensive Kinect games like Dance…

Xbox Support’s Cryptically Depressing Message

In the West, the Xbox 360 is all about friends. Playing with buddies online, friends lists, making new pals — all of which make this Japanese Xbox Support message all the more sad. On the Japanese Xbox Support page for console set up, “View More” (もっと見る) appears under the third item, which concerns connecting the…

Kinect Is A Blessing For This Family

With a (mostly) disappointing launch lineup and some niggling problems, it’s easy to get down on Microsoft’s Kinect. Try sparing a thought, though, for the parents of a four year-old autistic boy, for which it’s been a revelation. Gaming Nexus writer John Yan has penned an account of his experiences playing with Kinect with his…

Victor Declared In Hack-Kinect Bounty Hunt

Adafruit, which laid a $3,000 bounty for the first open source driver for the Kinect, has declared a winner. “Hector” delivered the goods, verified as workable by a third party in the hacking community. He’s putting the $3,000 toward “hacking tools and devices for a group of people he works with closely,” on projects such…

Kinect’s Star Wars Game Will Have You Force-Waving Your Arms In 2011

The Star Wars Kinect game, which so enthralled us before so quickly disappointing us when first revealed earlier this year, has around twelve months to get things right, with a release pencilled in for late 2011. “We have a Kinect Star Wars game coming out for next holiday”, Kinect’s creative director, Kudo Tsunoda, told the…

All The Kinect Accidents You Can Handle

With Kinect, Microsoft is getting gamers up off the sofa and getting them injured. Cue the highlight reel! As when the Wii launched, there are reports of accidents caused while playing. Some might be real, some might be faked, but most look painful. “Kinect Fail” appears to be the go to title on YouTube for…

A Visual Guide To Kinect Fail

Microsoft Suing Motorola Over Xbox 360 Tech

Not everything inside the Xbox 360 was designed by Microsoft; the console’s wi-fi capabilities (hold the jokes) and some its video codecs are licensed from Motorola. And are now the subject of a court battle between the two companies. A suit has been filed in a Federal Court in Seattle by Microsoft, alleging Motorola “broke…

Windows Phone 7 Games: The Good, the Bad and the Weird

Windows Phone 7 devices – aka the Xbox phones – begin arriving in stores today and Microsoft is hoping that gamers will be among the first to snatch up these new smartphones. Microsoft’s newest mobile operating system and the phones that use it certainly have much to offer gamers. After all, Windows Phone 7 comes…

Japanese Developer Screwed Up Console War Claims

At a presentation in Kyoto, Japanese developer Tose, best known for its Nintendo games, claimed the PS3 is outselling the Xbox 360 worldwide. The company is now apologizing for that. Oh, the shame! According to Tose’s original data, the Xbox 360 has sold 41 million consoles worldwide, while the PS3 has sold 42 million. If…

Xbox Indie Games Return To A Place You Can Actually See Them

When Microsoft redesigned the Xbox 360’s dashboard, it tucked the console’s indie games marketplace away in a spot most casual observers would never find it. After indie devs lit torches and grabbed pitchforks, Microsoft has now moved them back Where last week the games were hidden away in the “specialty shops” area of the dashboard,…

GameStop Bets On Kinect Over Move

This won’t be much of a surprise to anyone who’s been keeping tabs on the mainstream media and the general public’s reaction to both devices, but a GameStop executive reckons Kinect will outsell Move this Christmas. Especially at his house. Providing a rare, partisan appraisal of both motion-sensing peripheral’s chances in the all-important holiday season,…

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft Are Finally Competing on Common Ground

With the launch of the Xbox 360’s Kinect last week, all three major video game consoles now have motion-based gaming support. But which is the best? That’s not as easily answered as one might think. While all three allow you to forgo button-mashing for body movement to interact with games, they all do it in…

Kinect Unloved And Lonely In Tokyo

In an effort to give Japanese gamers a hands body-on with Kinect, Xbox Japan set up a demo station at a large electronics store in Tokyo’s Shinjuku. Make that, a lonely demo station — for now, at least! According to the individual who took these images, the photos were snapped sometime between 1 and 2pm.…

Is Kinect Already Hacked?

Judge for yourself. Someone claims to have written a driver for the Kinect’s motor, and he’s extracted a Kinect’s-eye view of what players look like to the device (above). A while back we had a series of monochromatic shots animated together, showing you how the Kinect recognizes players. This gives you a better view of…

How Microsoft Plans To Put A Video Game Controller In Everything

Microsoft is spending half a billion dollars to make sure that when you hear the word Kinect you think “the future of video games.” But Microsoft believes that the real potential for the voice recognition, motion-based technology is how they plan to use it with cell phones, computers and perhaps in the military and health…

Kinect Could Have Been On The Mac Instead Of The Xbox

Kinect is the Xbox 360’s Great Wavy Hope in the battle for the home entertainment market. Did you know, however, that the device could have easily gone to Apple instead? Inon Beracha, CEO of PrimeSense – the firm providing much of the magic behind Kinect – has revealed that back in 2008, when he was…

Two Important Questions About Playing Kinect Naked

Kotaku has already put Kinect through its paces, testing its voice and face recognition capabilities and how well it performs under imperfect lighting conditions. We haven’t tested it naked (as far as I know…) but other people have. IGN UK went there, asking “Can you play Kinect naked?” Yes, you can and it won’t detect…

Will Kinect’s “Thousand Points of Light” Interfere With the Wii’s Remote?

Let’s say for some odd reason you want to have both your Xbox 360 Kinect on and your Wii? Why? I haven’t a clue, but if you did, would the two systems, which both use infrared, interfere with one another? I tried playing Rally Ball with the activated Wii Remote in my hand and had…

Jimmy Fallon Pulls A Kinect Oprah

Xbox 360 Kinect’s third appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features Microsoft’s Kudo Tsunoda without sunglasses, the Vampire Diaries’ Nina Dobrev playing Dance Central, and ends with everybody in the audience scoring a Kinect bundle. Kinect first appeared on Fallon’s show last year as Project Natal, where it performed admirably. It’s second appearance back…