Quick off the blocks
If Aaron Greenberg was laughing before, he must be ecstatic now, with official sales figures from Microsoft putting Kinect at 1.3 million units sold in just ten days.
Could help out on the pitch
Kinect has countless potential applications in the gaming world, but what about beyond digital entertainment – what could the sensor bring to the wider world? With its PC drivers now readily available, companies all over the world can look at Kinect as an affordable and easily available way to bring new technology to their operations.
Capcom's boss David Reeves recently spoke about an evolved Move for PlayStation 4, which got us thinking: what improvements would you like to see in the Move? Here's a few ideas off the top of our glowing blue heads.
The Move itself may be a nifty piece of kit, but the PlayStation Eye camera often can't do justice to the augmented reality games available: play EyePet: Move Edition in soft lighting and you'll see what we mean. Grainy, low resolution images – the camera can only muster 640 x 480 at top whack – and poor light detection should see the Eye upgraded before Move.Improved PlayStation Eye
The Navigation sub-controller is comfortable and all, but it lacks vibration feedback and motion-sensing capabilities, the former having been featured in every pad (barring SIXAXIS) since the late 1990s. As for motion control, although it could mean a glowing ball stuck on top of the Navigation's slim frame, it could even be a simple accelerometer for detecting small movements: throwing grenades in Killzone 3 for example.Rumble and Motion-Sensing in Navigation
Whilst these two sit prettily at the top of our most-wanted list for Move, we're sure you can think of plenty more improvements for the future of Sony's motion controller. Let us know in the comments! Registration only takes a minute and will let you join in the discussion on every PlayStation Move game, PlayStation Move reviews and of course our forums!What are your thoughts?
Confusion reigns
Last week, the Wall Street Journal interviewed Xbox's chief operating officer Dennis Durkin about the potential for Kinect to deliver personalised advertising into the home, with Durkin reported as saying:We can cater which content we present to you based on who you are. How many people are in the room when an ad is shown? How many people are in the room when a game is being played? When you add this sort of device to a living room, there’s a bunch of business opportunities that come with that.Whilst the sensor's Minority Report-style controls have grabbed headlines, that film also used facial features to deliver targeted marketing, and there were concerns that Kinect's facial recognition and Xbox Live services could combine to tailor advertising content to users. Now Microsoft has released a statement to reassure users that this is not the case:
Xbox 360 and Xbox Live do not use any information captured by Kinect for advertising targeting purposes. Microsoft has a strong track record of implementing some of the best privacy protection measures in the industry. We place great importance on the privacy of our customers’ information and the safety of their experiences.The original quote from Durkin was discussing the potential for Kinect to offer such features, rather than their current implementation, but such was the furore surrounding the idea that it now looks unlikely for Microsoft to introduce them in the future.
Need for Speed Nitro-X, puppies and cards
EA's high-octane racer Need for Speed: Nitro-X should have seen the light of day back in September according to an early release schedule, but delay caused it to burn rubber in November instead. It's easily the highlight of this week's release, which seem to show WiiWare and DSiWare have gone to the dogs.
Lights on after all
A while ago, Coldwood Interactive spoke about The Fight: Lights Out and its lack of transparencies in the player character. The developers hinted that they would listen to player feedback and consider implementing the feature if enough fans requested it, and now it seems dissenting voices have been heard as the studio is set to bring transparencies to the game, amongst other features.
Sensory education
If you thought the video of Kinect's multi-touch inputs was impressive, wait until you see this new video of Kinect's camera being used to create 3D images.
Sonic Colours for DS and Wii have been garnering positive reviews all over the globe – don't worry, we're working on our reviews too – and launched in the UK on Friday with a somewhat unconventional marketing approach. Whilst there once was a time a Sonic game on Nintendo platforms would be eaten up by the games-buying public, Colours has performed very disappointingly, only managing to reach 36th place in the UK top 40.
8 titles in top 40
Whilst there was never any doubt that Call of Duty: Black Ops was going to land in the chart top spot, the launch of Kinect should have made the top 10 a more exciting line-up than usual, but disappointingly only one title for the sensor made the higher reaches of the chart.
Were you one of the lucky ones?
We recently ran a competition for 10 lucky winners to receive a free copy of WiiWare strategy title chick chick BOOM, with the top prize being a piece of personalised artwork drawn by the development team. We've just performed the draw so let's reveal the lucky winners!
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