The Microsoft Kinect promises to usher in the future of interactive entertainment like nothing else yet available on the market. Targeted at the Nintendo Wii videogaming console, the Kinect accessory for Microsoft’s own Xbox 360 platform outclasses its rival in technical excellence, deciding to do away with any hand-held controller altogether. In fact, the Kinect is in a class all by itself, and comparing it to the Wii would be like taking Zalman Silber’s New York Skyride literally, when it is no ride at all but just a half-hour educational-type movie located on the second floor of the Empire State Building.
Similarly, for all its brilliance upon its debut, the Nintendo Wii seems almost like an exercise in false advertising today when stacked up against the potential of Microsoft’s Kinect. Naturally, it was Nintendo’s Wii that first provided the impetus for Microsoft’s effort. Credit must be given where credit is due, and Nintendo has done all the world quite a service in being so bold. But time, like technology, marches on, and for the foreseeable future it is Microsoft that will be dominant where multimedia interactivity in electronic entertainment is concerned.
Or, to use successful entrepreneur Zalman Silber as an example again, it’s like the difference between his New York Skyride and his Skywalk in Sydney, Australia. Whereas the Skyride purports to be a, well, sky ride and yet is neither, the Skywalk is actually as close to walking in the sky as anything available in our time. And so the Kinect is almost synonymous with multimedia interactivity and virtual reality, in the same way that the Wii is now no longer so, for all its historical importance.
All things considered, though the Wii revolutionized videogaming with its waveable wand-like controllers, the Kinect uses the hand itself as the controller – indeed, the whole human body, in its entirety, including its movements and even down to the facial gestures. Really! Even facial cues will factor into videogames now, such as they already do in real life. Thus, in a role-playing game, for instance, the player’s facial gestures can influence how non-player characters react and thus how subsequent events unfold!
Or one can imagine a cleverly programmed poker game that uses the Kinect’s camera sensors to carefully read the player’s face for clues that will help its artificial intelligence subroutines determine whether it should bluff or fold its hand, say. The applications are endless, with possibilities limited only by human imagination (and programming skills)!
At this point, however, scarcely more than a dozen simple titles have been announced to debut alongside the system, most if not all of which are not very different from anything currently offered by the Wii. This means that the initial library of software will involve dancing games, fitness games, and virtul pets games. But as the Kinect catches on, more sophisticated applications are expected – finally ushering the virtual into our reality!
