Kinect Sensor with Kinect Adventures!

I am normally not a early adopter until recently. I ordered the Kinect when I saw it go on presale as I was very curious how it would work and how the tech would develop. I got the device in hand on Nov 4th and my wife and I have been using it since. (for almost a month now)To give you some demographic and environment info: I am ~30, I am not in any kind of shape (chubby, lazy, IT guy), the room we have Kinect in is our apartment living room with a space of ~ 8x7' in front of the TV when we move the coffee table out of the way, lighting is pretty dim in the room, and the Kinect is about 2.5 - 3ft above the floor under our center speaker under our TV mounted on the wall. TV is a 52" LCD that is wall mounted as well.Kinect iself-being the first itteration of the tech, I can see lots of room for improvement and can see where limitations to keep the price point where it is were placed. (like low res 3D camera, low res color camera, no CPU offloading of the processing, etc...) But... as we have seen with the Xbox 360 itself, development and advancement is impressive just in software. I expect developers, and MS to exploit this to full effect!Pros:Currently, it works well. The menus are great, the hand and voice movement detection works very well, and the facial recognition is also very accurate even in dim lighting.The potential for integration into other parts of the system is epic.Video Kinect's integration with Windows Live Messenger, and soon Lync will be also a great way to reduce the footprint of another web cam, or chat component in your life.Cons:Limited menus or navigation in Kinect for the rest of the Xbox. From what I understand this will be changing in the coming months. It would be great to have the same hand and voice controls through the entire Xbox UIThe ability to customize the hover time to select something should be offered, or allow wrist movement or hand movement detection to clock on something.Confusion in some games if you leave the play area, or dont, or switch with someone else and sometimes it doesnt notice.Inconsistencies in the game UI's... some are awesome, some are crap, and some leverage full facial recognition to log you into a game session (if you switch players), others don't... A standardization of this would be great and is an easy software fix.About the price-$150 isn't that bad for what you get. You get a game that would retail for ~ $49.00 + a controller that can support 2 players. Compare that to the price of other controllers for two people + a game and you are at the same price or close to it. Given that this is also a web cam, and gives more functionality than any controller package around... I think this is not bad.In reality you'll spend more on games than the Kinect which is the story with any console.Gaming with Kinect -Kinect Games we have:Joy RideKinect SportsKinect AdventuresEA Sports Active 2and Your Fitness EvolvedInitial game impressions:FUN - every game we fire up is entertaining in its own way. Joy Ride was a blast to just dork around with and the interface is pretty smooth and easy to use. Its not a racing game as you would expect, and I would like more actual driving interface (control acceleration and braking), but still quite fun.A great workout - Just playing table tennis in Kinect Sports can break quite a sweat and get the blood pumping. The boxing is quite a workout in Kinect Sports itself. EA Sports Active 2, and Your Shape fitness evolved are both serious and quite intense workouts. Those both make the Wii Fit seem like a toy as this isn't using some abstract movement data from a single point to think you are doing something right... These are critical of your position, posture, movements to ensure you are getting the most out of it. I would recommend being a bit careful if you are heavier (like me), the jumping in some of the games can be quite hard on the joints.A refreshing way to get everyone playing - Before the Xbox was mainly my toy, my wife had little interest in it. Now we play games together actively, and have a blast doing it. It is quite a refreshing take on console games and is making it more of an inclusive event to get family and friends engaged with.Loaded with black mail ready pictures - While doing many of these games, video and pictures are taken... so it is wise to do these in proper attire ;) Most of these pics are purged from the machine, and you need to choose to upload them to KinectShare.com which from there you can choose to upload to your favorite social network or download them. We find most of the pics and vid to be funny as hell, but also quite embarrassing at times, now seeing how foolish we look ducking-dodging-jumping in Kinect Adventures :)Overall, and relevance compared to other motion tracking products-I dont think you can go wrong with Kinect. Out of the box its 4 of 5 stars, still has some development do to, but is far above my expectations, and any issue I have or concern I have can be resolved with simple code changes. This is the future of gaming in its G1 stage. I think in the end a hybrid of what Sonys Move is, and Kinect is how we will see gaming evolve. Full 3D mapping and hand held controls. But if I have to choose one over the other, I think Kinect is a far better purchase at this time as it has far more of a future for it than just the "Wii with a light" - MOVE system. The Kinect seems far more easy to get into than the Move from what I have seen... people are far more willing to give Kinect a chance than Move if placed in front of one or the other.For serious gaming, I use product specific tools - For Forza, or PC based racing, I have Fanatec Turbo S Clubsport wheel setup, for FPS I use the hand held controllers... Each thing has its own benefits. Just as Kinect does, it's not good for everything, but the stuff it is good for, it rocks at.Kinect is revolutionary for gaming much as the Wii was a few years ago. The Move system is evolutionary off the Wii concept and is definitely a great refinement on what was started by Nintendo. Kinect will be evolved from this point via software and presumably in the next gen of consoles becomes the center stage of the controller system, or a core augmentation of any controller interface.And the price point is reasonable for a two person controller with game. Price out any other combo out there with two physical controllers and a game and you are nearly to the same price.Can't go wrong!

First let me say, YES, there is a lag BUT it does not take away from the fun of this thing. Also I did have a difficult time calibrating it to me. It doesn't see dark clothing or dark skin too well and halogen light stands are an issue... with that being said, how can I not give this thing 5 Stars. I am sure, as time goes on, more titles will launch and Microsoft XBOX 360 people have always been pretty good of sending out updates to your machine. So I am not really worried about stuff like that. What I will say is that there is so much potential for this thing.VOICE COMMANDS: The Voice Commands are A MAJOR PLUS! I use it with Zune and in a Zune pass, when I am playing music, all I have to do is say XBOX Pause, or XBOX Play (and next or previous). And when I am playing a movie or TV show through Zune, I just tell it to (all commands are preceded by XBOX) to stop, pause, play. Plus you just tell it to go to the Kinect Hub or Dashboard.The only thing missing is the Netflix add-in with the Kinect. Hopefully that update is around the corner. Oh and the ESPN add-in for the Kinect is great. You can watch live games as they are playing, or check out highlights through Sportscenter and even watch a game from the previous day. This is very cool. I watch a little of the Clippers game. Of course, the games must be carried by ESPN, but since they are a subsidiary of ABC, I am hoping that I can get some ABC carried sports.AS FOR THE GAMES: I have been playing Kinect Adventures and I live in a Condo, 2nd floor, and trust me, the game wants you to jump and not just make the motion as if you are jumping. This could be a problem for people who live under you or for people with any joint discomforts. But the games are fun, Rally ball don't require you to jump, but I like the one game where it ask you to flap your arms and you avatar float around trying to complete the task. By the way, it doesn't seem to use the avatar you created, well maybe it does, because last night it couldn't calibrate me, but this morning it did. I have to give that a shot and see.YOU THE CONTROLLER: This takes a little getting use to, but I am getting better at maneuvering the screen ala Tom Cruise. It is not as fast as a physical controller, but that's not the point. The point is that it works well as you being the controller.VIDEO IMAGES @ Voice Messaging: With the invent of HD Video and Mega-pixel of photos, this part is a bit underwhelming. When it takes a photo of you playing the games, it looks like a photo from the JFK assassination.. really graining, but viewable. But with that being said, it takes a photo of EVERYTHING around you, so you may want to clean house or put away anything you don't want seen... like that 12 pack, or that person you have tied up in the background (QUIET you!). Just kidding around. The cool thing about it, you don't have to share the photos if you don't want to and you can delete them. But what is there fun in that, not sharing. Of course, you want to share your embarrassing photo of you looking like an idiot playing this game. The voice messaging is a heck of a lot better than the microphone on the headset. Screw typing, I can now just send my friends a clear voice message through Kinect.OVERALL: This system makes me feel like I am actually here in the future. Kinect and the XBOX360 seems to be more than just about gaming. The Kinect has no hard-core gaming connection and that isn't the reason for it and even if it offers that, i don't think I could put down the controller because I want things to happen when I push a button. I am a big first person shooter person, but this Kinect device makes it fun and interesting to do other stuff. I love using the voice commands and have it actually do the thing that you ask. Way fricking cool.