14 DAY TRIAL // After officially announcing a name change, which turned Project Natal into Kinect, Microsoft also revealed that the motion tracking system designed to work with the Xbox 360 home console would be officially launched on November 4 in North America with the rest of the world set to get it soon after that date.
The concept behind Kinct is simple. The movement the player makes is tracked using a complex camera system and then translated into inputs that can be used by the Xbox 360 interface or various videogames. The software giant again showed the system in action at E3, with one of its engineers playing several games. It all looked good even if a bit laggy at times. One interesting fact seems to be that when not controlling the action on screen, the player needs to stay pretty still in order not to actually send a command without wanting it.
Despite settling on a launch date, the maker has not talked about the price point for Kinect, which will be hugely important for the adoption rate it will get amongst gamers. There were some reports that it might cost as much as 200 dollars but those were rebuffed by Microsoft. The latest news coming from a Swedish retailer is that the price will hover over 120 dollars, which might be more palatable. Sony has committed to out the rival PlayStation Move for under 100 dollars when packaged with a new game that uses motion tracking.
Marc Whitten, the corporate vice president of Xbox Live at Microsoft, said, “Xbox LIVE is about making it simple to find the entertainment you want, with the friends you care about, wherever you are. Kinect is about making that experience more natural and engaging than ever before. Once you experience your movies, music, sports and games with Xbox LIVE and Kinect, you won’t ever want to go back.”