MICROSOFT GIVES US A REASON TO KINECT

Kinect Sports from Rare was the first game any one can considered in more detail with the hardware. As I said, “Kinect Sports offers soccer, beach volleyball, bowling, table tennis, track and field, and boxing played solo or in teams. Each are played with your full body as the Kinect camera calculates your limb, torso and hand movements.”

It makes a lot of sense for many of these games to be played without the hindrance of cables or controllers because most of the people particularly looking forward to getting out of breath playing the Track and Field events.

Much more convincing though was Your Shape Fitness Evolved. This is the new fitness game that uses the Kinect controller to track your movements during your routine and then offers real-time feedback. “Seeing the game in action was a marked step forward from previous DVD-like fitness games that made use of a camera. Having the player’s frame on screen as the game visually analyzed their skeletal positioning and accuracy is really impressive.”

Simply seeing an accurate real-time 1-to-1 picture of yourself in the game completely made sense of Kinect to all of us.
Again, this all makes sense, and you'd expect Microsoft (and possibly Sony) to have some new hardware a year from now. But it will interesting to see how Microsoft manages gamers' expectations and the sales of its consoles as it gets closer to releasing Project Natal. It's also important to note that Microsoft has said the new technology will work with existing Xbox 360s so long as you add the new video camera accessory.