OFFICIAL Kinect thread.

[Homerboy]

So my mom gave my wife Dance Central for xmas... the funny thing is i don't have kinect so we can't play it. i was kinda like 'wtf?' when she got a game for my wife for xmas...

turns out when she and my sister went shopping at old navy on black friday, they were giving these out to people who spent $25 or more at old navy. both my mom and my sister got a copy for free, and my mom gave it to my wife for xmas heh.

Buy the Kinect dude. Trust me. It's a blast. It's what the Wii wished it was. (I know how you love the Wii!)

 

[blurredvision]

Yeah, I really must eat a little bit of crow, although I don't think I ever really openly bashed Kinect, just expressed my extreme doubts about it. I thought Move would be the best implementation of motion control amongst the three consoles when the dust settled. Now that I've owned a Wii, Move, and Kinect, Kinect is far and away my favorite. I'm even considering selling my Move equipment because I just don't know if I'll use it anymore.

 

[Homerboy]

Yeah, I really must eat a little bit of crow, although I don't think I ever really openly bashed Kinect, just expressed my extreme doubts about it. I thought Move would be the best implementation of motion control amongst the three consoles when the dust settled. Now that I've owned a Wii, Move, and Kinect, Kinect is far and away my favorite. I'm even considering selling my Move equipment because I just don't know if I'll use it anymore.

Well I think the controller motion control of the Wii and Move still has a real place in the industry. Kinect is just a completely different experience than the other two. Much like I never though of the Wii competing against PS3 or 360, I don't think you can compare Wii/Move vs Kinect.

Personally I have no use for the Move having a Wii and and 360+Kinect.

 

[SAWYER]

I haven't tried Move but I was more impressed by that than Kinect, it looks way more accurate and able to be used in more serious gaming

 

[Homerboy]

I haven't tried Move but I was more impressed by that than Kinect, it looks way more accurate and able to be used in more serious gaming

Like I said, two totally different ideas/implementations.
Keep in mind rumor has it that MS is working/planning on increasing the accuracy of the Kinect 4x

 

[blurredvision]

Keep in mind rumor has it that MS is working/planning on increasing the accuracy of the Kinect 4x

Microsoft already shot that rumor down a week or two ago.

 

[Homerboy]

Microsoft already shot that rumor down a week or two ago.

I'll believe it when I don't see it though

 

[IceBergSLiM]

My girl got me Kinect for xmas. So much fun. exhausting fun at that. and man what a party toy. Everyone loved it New years eve.

 

[Onita]

A buddy of mine got one for xmas. I had no interest in it, but man is it a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I still worry that I'll spend $150.00 and hardly use it outside of a party machine (i.e. Wii), when he has one that I can use the same way. I think I'll wait and see, and hopefully get a good deal/new games come out.

 

[vi edit]

I messed around with it this weekend at a friends. Only game they had was the "Party In Motion" one and it was HORRIBLE. It took like 20 minutes just trying to fumble though the player setup. Then when you got in it just got even more aggravating. Responses seemed a second behind at best, and at worst they didn't even come close to recognizing when you were trying to throw a ball or release it.

Another thing that I absolutely hated was that you couldn't leave the "playing area". If I had my beer setting down on a table outside of the "game area" the system would freak out and pause until I came back. Lame.

If that was the only game I had to judge it off of, then I'd say the Wii had nothing to worry about. I guess I'll have to try out the sports game and see if it's any better.

It has potential, but it's even more prone to failure from terrible games than the wii is.

 

[Homerboy]

I messed around with it this weekend at a friends. Only game they had was the "Party In Motion" one and it was HORRIBLE. It took like 20 minutes just trying to fumble though the player setup. Then when you got in it just got even more aggravating. Responses seemed a second behind at best, and at worst they didn't even come close to recognizing when you were trying to throw a ball or release it.

Another thing that I absolutely hated was that you couldn't leave the "playing area". If I had my beer setting down on a table outside of the "game area" the system would freak out and pause until I came back. Lame.

If that was the only game I had to judge it off of, then I'd say the Wii had nothing to worry about. I guess I'll have to try out the sports game and see if it's any better.

It has potential, but it's even more prone to failure from terrible games than the wii is.

You may have tried out THE WORST one there is. My kids won't even touch it (7 and 9). The other thing I have learned about the Kinect is setup is CRUCIAL for a good experience. Doing the player ID for different times of the day (assuming a room with windows) makes a dif too.

There is a large window for error with Kinect I think, but setup properly (and playing a proper game) and its beyond awesome.

Kinect Sports, much like the original Wii Sports, is all you really need for good party fun.

Javelin anyone?!?!

 

[Soccerman06]

I have spent the last 3 days straight trying to beat table tennis on champion on kinnect sports and lose every time. I got close a few times but still am off by atleast 4 points at the end. Also volleyball on champion is hard, I cant even reach the ball before it passes me lol.

 

[spidey07]

Setup is crucial. I'm still having trouble where the kinect won't move up enough to get our head and it essentially chops off your head. It seems like I have to go through the whole tune process everytime I want to play a game. It's probably because we're only about 6.5 feet away from the sensor and it can't see the floor because of the coffee table pushed all the way up against the tv stand.

 

[blurredvision]

I took my Kinect up to a friend's house for our New Year's party and Dance Central was a big hit. He has a fairly large living room with plenty of space, which was pretty nice. Since there was a lot of alcohol involved, there were about 7 or 8 of us all standing up and dancing throughout the living room even though there was no reason to.

I also wanted to note here that Your Shape Fitness is on sale at Amazon for $33.99. I assume they are trying to beat Best Buy's sale price this week of $34.99. I went ahead and ordered it. I need to start doing some kind of workout and I'm hoping this will fit the need. If the sessions aren't too long, I'll start working out when I get up in the morning and start coming into work later.

 

[Homerboy]

I took my Kinect up to a friend's house for our New Year's party and Dance Central was a big hit. He has a fairly large living room with plenty of space, which was pretty nice. Since there was a lot of alcohol involved, there were about 7 or 8 of us all standing up and dancing throughout the living room even though there was no reason to.

I also wanted to note here that Your Shape Fitness is on sale at Amazon for $33.99. I assume they are trying to beat Best Buy's sale price this week of $34.99. I went ahead and ordered it. I need to start doing some kind of workout and I'm hoping this will fit the need. If the sessions aren't too long, I'll start working out when I get up in the morning and start coming into work later.

I'm in on this with ya.... daddy's getting a bit... fat.

 

[Seeruk]

Kinect Humble Pie - Or how the Kinect is pretty damn good!

I wasn't a naysayer as such, I just underestimated the value of honest-to-goodness-fun-games. I wished for the Kinect for Christmas, not really for myself, but so that my wife and 2 year old son could perhaps join me in my hobby of choice a little more often. For my son I bought Kinectimals of course, and My Shape - Fitness Evolved for the wife to go along with the bundled Kinect Adventures.

My hopes were for an better than Wii experience and I can say it has been achieved!

The good:
- Compared to anything else I have tried, the Kinect is the most accurate system on the market. Not only that but the range of motion of all parts of the body that's captured is incredible!
- Our living room's shape means that we are a bit borderline on space. That means that typically the top half of a player's head and anything below the ankles is not visible to the Kinect, yet it still manages to guess where those parts are. I am waiting for the wall mount to arrive which should give an extra 2 ft of play space.
- The games: Honestly, Wii Sports will never be played in our house again after also buying Kinect Sports! Rare did a great job of making this an "easy to play, hard to master" game in the mould of Nintendo classics, whilst being extremely entertaining at the same time. Kinectimals is a very high production value game perfectly suited to 3-7 year olds, whilst still being fun even for me to play. Even Kinect Adventures is a decent amount of fun.
- A 2 year old can use it. Sure I haven't been able to get him to stand there and do all the calibration, but he his happy enough playing dead with his Kinectimals tiger and can even do the swipe gestures to select different things on the screen
- Fitness games are a home-run on this system - no balance boards, no switching this controller to that controller with dongle A, B or C attached.

The Bad:
- Sure there is a little input lag, but nothing like claimed by some. It's probably between 0.25 and 0.5 seconds and most games compensate for it very well.
- Why do I have to sign in seperately for Kinect and Xbox?? This is sooooo annoying and pointless!
- Some games cheat a little with multiplayer. For instance 2 player Table Tennis, both players are rooted to the spot and cannot move around the table like in single player.
- The price. I bought it as a standalone add-on to my 360s and it was about 33% too expensive even for an early adopter. For mass-market penetration the price needs to be halved!


The Hopes:
- Fun family games are already this system's forte, but we need some more 'serious' games
- That Kinect will not be limited to games without a controller. Simple uses such as the Kinect being used to mirror head movements and look around the cockpit of a jet fighter or car in Forza 4 would be a simple but brilliant use for the system.
- That the hype and heavy marketing continues. Lots of people are not sold on the Kinect… until they try it. Then even the biggest doubters are extremely impressed. More units sold, means more developers taking it seriously and even more creative uses.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I've noticed that my video for VideoKinect is choppy and ghosting from slow framerate. It appears to be auto-compensating for the night time lighting conditions of my living room (lights overhead and to the sides, but not in front of me). It's noticeably better during the day when my windows can let in sunlight...but still not wonderful.

It doesn't seem entirely necessary, since you see nice smooth motion during the card-calibration, in between the "eye"-alignments. I don't really care about VideoKinect, but I'm just hoping it doesn't have any impact during games or anything. Here's hoping they'll release an update that improves the auto-compensation, or provide an option to disable it.

We just picked ours up this week and are otherwise loving it. Dance Central is really a lot of fun.

 

[Rage187]

We are playing ours again. My wife and her friends play Dance Central each weekend and then I am "forced" to play during the week

 

[Seeruk]

Anyone know of a good list of planned Kinect releases for 2011?

I'm still having a ball with Kinect Sports (trying to beat all on champion ... but bowling and table tennis are killers!) and even had fun finishing all the adventures in Kinect adventures. Trying to work out which games I should look at next but don't want to waste money on genres that will have something better out later in the year.

 

[Drako]

Does anybody here have the Kinect Wall Mount?

I currently have our Kinect sitting below our TV. I've read that if you mount the Kinect higher you get area closer to the TV to play.

 

[Seeruk]

Yeah I just installed the wall mount works great.

I got a couple of extra feet of play space (which now perfectly fits the room with the 'best' area). Not sure if that was because it was mounted higher (which it was by about 12 inches) but it is now sitting 1 foot back too.

So mounted 1 foot higher and 1 foot back from where it was - and I gained 2ft of play space... kind of makes sense

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Anyone know of a good list of planned Kinect releases for 2011?

I'm still having a ball with Kinect Sports (trying to beat all on champion ... but bowling and table tennis are killers!) and even had fun finishing all the adventures in Kinect adventures. Trying to work out which games I should look at next but don't want to waste money on genres that will have something better out later in the year.

Microsoft keeps saying April will have more blockbuster games, but I haven't seen what games those are going to be.

Also, I'm having trouble with the beach volleyball champion.

 

[Drako]

Yeah I just installed the wall mount works great.

I got a couple of extra feet of play space (which now perfectly fits the room with the 'best' area). Not sure if that was because it was mounted higher (which it was by about 12 inches) but it is now sitting 1 foot back too.

So mounted 1 foot higher and 1 foot back from where it was - and I gained 2ft of play space... kind of makes sense

Thanks for the reply. I ended up buying the wall mount yesterday and installed it, and yeah it makes a great improvement in usable area in the room.

My wife is loving the Kinect so far - Dance Central and Biggest Loser. I've been playing Kinect Adventures, and have to admit, it's a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

Well, back to Dead Space 2

 

[Dessert Tears]

Anyone get Dance Masters? The demo was okay, but the DDR-heavy song list appeals to me.

 

[Aikouka]

Anyone get Dance Masters? The demo was okay, but the DDR-heavy song list appeals to me.

I have it. I prefer the dance checks in DM vs DC.