Microsoft’s Kinect For Xbox 360: The New Motion Control System!

The speculation ends with Microsoft finally revealing its much anticipated new camera-based motion control system on Sunday night. This system requires no controller and is being claimed to be a big adrenaline shot for Xbox 360.

Kinect, previously dubbed Project Natal was first demonstrated at the E3 show in 2009 and the new moniker is confirmed just a few hours ago on Sunday night. Steven Tolouse, Xbox Live Directory of policy and enforcement said in a blog post, that the name means “kinetic” and “connection,” implying what the technology achieves.

He said, “It’s interesting to me how much is put into a technology’s name. I, like many others, decried Nintendo naming their new console the Wii. And look at how many units it’s sold. The trick is in the magic of the experience.”

Kinect promises to bring an entirely new experience to gaming. The beauty of Kinect is that it can simply be plugged into Xbox 360 to enjoy the new game play experience, mostly without the need for any hardware controllers; such as driving a car as if the hands were holding a virtual steering wheel.

This is a great new way of playing games and completely different from existing free-movement controls offered by Sony and Nintendo, which use separate hardware controllers with built in sensors and accelerometers that detect the actions being performed by the player. But with Kinect, things are different, as it maps all the 48 skeletal points of a human body constantly, ensuring a high level of accuracy. It brings a big change to the way games are played.

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With Sony going all out and increasing sales by reducing the price and redesigning its PlayStation 3 system, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 sales reported a decline. Sony is also working on its own motion control system, called “Move.” But now Microsoft is taking the bull by the horn and hopes that the Kinect motion controller paves the path for taking the gaming console to great heights in the next years.

You will have to wait until Microsoft’s press conference today to find out the price of this system and to know what games will be available when Kinect comes out in fall this year.

Tags: Kinect for Xbox 360, Microsoft, Xbox 360