If you see long lines at popular retailers, its not a Black Friday sale, it is because Kinect launches today. Anyone with Xbox live has likely seen the countdown timer for the Xbox Kinect launch for some time now. Now that the day is here, how’s the reception?
First off, it is hard to tell. As of the time of writing, a search in Google for Kinect doesn’t produce any news results. After heading over to Google news, I see more activity and expect much more today. At least Google didn’t offer the suggestion: Did you mean “connect.”
Kinect Promotion
As expected, Microsoft put some money into marketing it, including hiring Mark Wahlberg to announce a free Kinect for every Boys and Girls club across America, here’s the promotional video:
As Bloomberg reporter, Kina Bass tweeted, Microsoft already boosted the Kinect sales estimates from 3 Million to 5 Million units by the end of the holidays.
Kinect Reviews
Reviews of Kinect, thus far, have been very positive.Seattle reporter, Todd Bishop, spent a full week playing with Kinect and had this to say:
The graphics are rich, the voice recognition is accurate, and the high-definition, customizable Xbox Live avatars seem to take on a whole new life in Kinect’s games and menus. In fact, one of the coolest parts of the experience is the ability to effortlessly control a virtual on-screen twin. The first time I scratched my shoulder and saw my avatar doing the same thing, I almost couldn’t believe it.
Todd’s only complaints were some user-interface issues (which will likely be cleaned up) and not sure he likes controlling everything with his body and voice (probably takes some time to get used to).
Engadget, a site that isn’t particularly fond of Microsoft, said in an in-depth highly critical review of Kinect:
“It’s always hard to review version 1.0 of a platform — it’s tempting to give concept and potential nearly as much weight as execution.The Kinect as hardware is great…you can bet the company will continue to pool resources into improving the experience (in reference to the menus).”
Amazon users thus far have given the Kinect 4.3 out of 5 stars. At CVG, Tim Ingham offers this glowing review:
“[Kinect] is an absolute pleasure to have in the home. Much more importantly, it’s a reliable one. Within an hour of messing about with the Kinect Dashboard, any nagging question marks over lag and unresponsiveness are snuffed out. Your on-screen hand icon matches your real-life movements near-perfectly, whilst the voice commands…. are an absolute revelation.”
The hype around Kinect would have been much stronger, had the Wii not been around for so long. We will be releasing data soon that suggests Microsoft may hit its lofty numbers. Whether it pans out or not, only time will tell, but we must thank the Kinect for bringing us closer to Minority Report hands free technology–now if they could just work on those floating virtual monitors.
