Kinect can already predict player movement fairly accurately. What if it could do more than that, though? Microsoft plans to launch a new Kinect system that will be able to not only more accurately record movement, but may also be able to sense when you are angry. The movement detection will apparently be so strong that it will be able to read players’ lips. If that doesn’t scare you already, it will reportedly also be able to sense when a player is angry.
What happens when this technology for anger sensing is applied to games? I can’t really think of any particularly practical uses for it, except for maybe having games sense your anger (and frustration), and then possibly dialing down the difficulty a bit.
While games being able to sense feelings is kind of cool and space age-y, it also provides creep factor times eleven. Are your games creeping on you? Each game should have a rage-o-meter in order to gauge anger while playing for better market research. So I suppose there are reasons for it.
The improved motion sensing is actually more useful, and, if it does work as prescribed, will actually help the Kinect accessory out. The capabilities of the current Kinect were summed up neatly by Eurogamer last year:
When Kinect launched in November 2010 the depth sensor was set at a 30 frames per second limit and a 320×240 resolution limit. The issue relates to the USB controller interface, which is capable of around 35MB/s, but it only uses around 15/16MB/s. This artificial limit is in place because multiple USB devices can be used at once on an Xbox 360.
Kinect 2 launch date rumors have varied from 2012 to 2013, but it’s probably even further out than that.
[Source: Eurogamer]
