My latest gadget: Xbox360 with Kinect

Yesterday I bought a Xbox360 with Kinect to play with at home. In case you are not familiar yet with the product or technology, it’s basically a game console that let’s you play games without a controller, using your body to play the game. A bit similar to the Wii, but this time without even holding a controller in your hand. For example, you move to the right and the game character moves to the right, or you kick like you would kick a ball and on screen you see the ball going in the direction you are kicking it in. It’s very intuitive, you just set it up, calibrate the system and get going. Within minutes I was playing my first games.

Of course Scott and Elaine were curious as well to see what I had bought, and they wanted to join right away. Elaine is still a bit too young to use it (she runs away from the sensor so the connection is lost), but Scott picked up it quickly. It’s the most natural thing for him that when he jumps the person on the screen also jumps. He was able to play a level of River Rush in Kinect Adventures (see image below) with a decent score. With a controller he can’t do this yet (he just turned 3 years old), so this is the perfect game console for young kids.

Image source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/04/Kinect_Adventures_cover.jpg

I am sure I’ll be spending quite some time with the Kinect over the next couple of months. This is the future of console games, and maybe in the future for casual online games as well. The experience to play games together is amazing. Too bad I am flying to Holland tonight for a short business trip, I would have loved to play a bit more today.