According to Eurogamer’s ninja sources, the next iteration of Microsoft’s controller-free motion-sensing Kinect – that’ll be included with the next Xbox – will include greatly enhanced tracking and voice-recognition capabilities.
Apparently the device will be able to read lips, detect the direction a player is facing and recognize the player’s emotional state.
The device, unhampered by the slow USB speeds that currently limit Kinect’s technology will allow for high-bandwidth data transfer that’ll allow Kinect to allow for far greater precision.
“It can be cabled straight through on any number of technologies that just take phenomenally high res data straight to the main processor and straight to the main RAM and ask, what do you want to do with it?” their source confided.
Microsoft, rather typically, “does not comment on rumour or speculation”. What do you think? While I think it makes sense for Microsoft to include Kinect with new Xboxes and make it more intrinsic to new consoles, there’s a shade under 11 million of the devices currently sitting in homes. Making them obsolete in just a year or two would anger those who’ve shelled out the high asking price. The other option is to make games compatible with current, and future versions of Kinect – but that makes it so devs need to code support for two different accessories, and releasing games with support only for Kinect 2 would fragment an already split user base.
It would be an incredibly risky move, especially with Microsoft’s previous stance on the Kinect hardware – as it stands right now – working on future hardware. Abandoning relatively new hardware for something shiner is incredibly risky – but it’s not as if Microsoft hasn’t done that before.
If only this thing could read what my lips are saying right now…
Last Updated: November 29, 2011
