Xbox 360 Kinect – Dashboard and Live Updates

Kinect and Xbox Live.

After Microsoft's high-budget press conference, I was pretty eager to get my clammy E3 fueled hands on Kinect. In order to do so, I had an exclusive one-on-one demonstration with it with Scott Wilson, the man behind the design of the recently revealed slender Xbox 360 model. Wilson was particularly proud of the smaller, slightly angled 360 console. The sleek black finish is obviously paying homage to the Elite 360 model, but the Xbox 360 “slim” (as it has been dubbed) is a welcome change in aesthetics.

However Wilson was mainly here to show me the changes to the Dashboard and some social aspects of Xbox Live. To kick things off, I was asked to stand in front of the Kinect camera where I witnessed a “behind the scenes” biometric view of my person on screen. The Kinect camera then started to scan in my face and body shape to automatically create my Live avatar. It showed heat signatures and a wireframe outline of my joints as I moved around in real-time. The tracking was almost flawless, allowing me to wave my arms around like an idiot and see my body outline respond seemlessly. The biometric view was a bit ugly however and Scott soon informed me that this is only a developer tool and to show me what the camera is doing in the background. The final release of Kinect will have a fun, interactive front-end for the avatar automation, where users will be participating as the console scans you.

Impressively, after just a few moments my avatar was standing there, looking almost identical to the one I had to create manually on my old 360 console. Waving at the console immediately logs you in as well, recognising who you are by scanning your face in a matter of seconds.

From here, the new Xbox 360 Dashboard looks familiar except the menu tiles are larger and better positioned to allow for the new motion-controlled interface. Moving your hands out in front of you generates a hand cursor on screen that you can then hover over menu items. Initially I was holding my hands down too low, trying to following the line of sight of the Kinect camera. Instead I should have held my hands out directly in front of me, like I wanted to actually swipe the screen at a distance. Once corrected though, it was surprisingly fluid and responsive to my movements.

The menu tiles tilt with a 3d paralax effect according to your movement across the screen and hovering over a set item for a couple of seconds selects it. A slick circular time indicator lets you know how long you have to hover for. The Kinetic camera can detect left and right hands so it doesn't matter what your natural preference is.

If using your hands is too much work, Kinect also allows you to command the Xbox with your voice. Simply saying “XBOX” with a clear voice brings up a menu that shows you what commands it will recognise. Once you get familiar with the menu items, you can string commands together such as “XBOX...PLAY” or “XBOX... PAUSE” for instant movie play-back controls. No more trying to find the remote in the dark, now you can just tell your Xbox what do it. Getting past the silliness of talking out loud to my console, it proved to be a very innovative and logical progression for this technology. Many assumed that using voice recognition with excessive background noise would be a serious flaw, but even in a rowdy E3 room surrounded by explosions and loud music, it picked up the voice commands perfectly.

Next up, I was shown a brief demonstration of the inbuilt Video Chat features with Kinect. Once logged in, you can begin a video chat with any of your Xbox Live friends who are online by hovering your hand over their photo tile. Once active, both views are displayed with you on the left and your friend on the right. The Kinect camera automatically pans and tracks your face to suit, filling the screen with the optimum vantage point for the chat. If another person enters the room and stands or sits next to you, the camera will swiftly pan out and adjust to fit both of you perfectly inframe. Users can take photos of one another, as well as share images and video easily between one another. Even PC users with Microsoft Messenger can take part in Kinect video chats with a basic USB web-cam, but of course they won't have the autofocus features of Kinect.

Speaking of the Kinect camera itself, the new Xbox “slim” console will have a special socket for the camera located at the back of the unit. However old Xbox 360 users can still use a Kinect camera as each one ships with a USB converter, allowing it to plug into one of the rear USB slots on the original 360.

To end the presentation, I was shown through the new entertainment features of Kinect that have come about from an exclusive partnership between Microsoft and ESPN. Logging in displays an ESPN tile that opens up a whole new world of sporting channels available for Xbox Live Gold members. In the ESPN lounge, your avatar will appear surrounded by screens, each one depicting a game such as College Football, a FIFA match or the latest NBA replay of the Lakers recent victory. The number of avatars standing next to yours gives you an indication of how many other people are watching that game. Obviously it's not an exact number, but a relative measure of who else is currently logged in and viewing.

Even when watching a game, the user has the option of interacting across Xbox Live with other fans as well. For example as soon as you log in, you can choose which side you are supporting, popping up a bar that represents what team other spectators are behind. Trivia and other fun facts will also pop-up, allowing you to test your knowledge against friends and other fellow fans. Of course, in New Zealand ESPN isn't such a huge deal. But when enquiring what the ESPN channel will do for us down-under, I was informed that Xbox are talking to local television providers to get exclusive content relative to us. For example Australia are in-line for a deal with FoxTel for local sporting content via Xbox Live.

There will be more New Zealand related information to come over the following months leading up to our launch. NZGamer.com will keep you all informed about Kinect, the new Xbox 360 and the updated Xbox Live functionality as we get word from Microsoft NZ.

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