14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS has formally launched a product that may or may not have Microsoft crying foul in front of the doors of the US Patent and Trademark Office and whatever court happens to supervise infringement lawsuits.
The former has formally launched the Xtion motion sensor, which recognizes whole-body movements and translates them into game commands, not unlike Kinect.
The list of games that already support Xtion is not very large, but ASUS promises it will grow quickly.
Examples of titles that are or will eventually work are SEGA's Virtual Tennis 4, EA's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Street Fighter 4 by Capcom, Fruit Ninja by Halfbrick Studios, and Rovio's Angry Birds.
We are going to spend a moment wondering how full-body motion and Angry Birds go hand in hand. Maybe by having people mimic the throw of a slingshot.
Fortunately, the usefulness of Xtion is harder to question in the three games bundled with the device: Beatbooster, DanceWall and MayaFit.
What's more, for those who don't really play games all that much, ASUS' Xtion gets custom-designed Picasa, Facebook and Flickr applications too.
Not only that, but the Kylo Browser, developed by Hillcrest Labs, possesses a gesture-based interface with direct links to over 30 websites. Text can be entered via an on-screen keyboard and web content can be zoomed in or out with just a move.
Furthermore, simple pushes, waves and taps will bring movies, photo galleries and music lists within your imaginary reach.
Finally, the Xtion store can be accessed for various sports, fitness and dance games/simulators, not just action games.
As for the hardware, the field of view (58 height x 45 width x 70 depth degrees) is communicated to the PC via USB 2. 0 (the PC needs decent specs, but not that high). Go here for the announcement and here for the product pages (there seem to be three versions of Xtion).