Everything You Need to Know About Kinect

The Xbox 360’s new bit of technology has had a wide showing on E3. Formerly known as Project Natal, now as Kinect, Fable III will be using this peripheral, so there might be some interest amongst our readers on it. You can read much more on the Kinect through a link-aggregate on Destructoid, or read some press summaries on 1up, Games Radar or GameSpot. From Gamespot:

What makes Kinect even more interesting is that its functionality extends beyond games and into the Xbox 360 dashboard. Kinect users can tell the Xbox 360 (thanks to a built-in microphone in Kinect) to perform various actions whether it’s pausing a movie or initiating a video chat with a friend. Additionally, users can navigate through menus by simply placing their hand in the air to a corresponding object on screen.

Of course, with the motion control systems found on the Wii and PlayStation 3, there’s some calibration involved. With Kinect, we’ve seen games where players are prompted to stand in a specific spot for a few seconds while the camera retrieves general information about your position, but in a lot of cases, we’ve also seen players jump in and out instantly without the need for the camera stop gameplay for calibration reasons.

Kinect is currently scheduled for release on November 4, 2010 in North America with a worldwide release before the end of the year, but neither an official price nor bundle options have been announced. Be sure to check out the highlights of GameSpot’s E3 2010 Kinect coverage by following the links below.