Greetings knowledge seekers:

This month’s blog comes to you in the form of some good ol’ fashioned web info.

In the next few months, the generation of gaming is about to take a drastic leap forward.  Ever since the Wii was released, all consoles have been making a move towards more hands-on gameplay.  For some this may mean creating a joystick that works more like a remote and for others, such as Nintendo, this may mean finally entering the online aspect of gaming.  I, personally, am an Xbox junkie, so this month’s blog will not include anymore information on their competiton.

Since last year, Microsoft has been talking about it’s new system upgrade, the Kinect.  They have been dropping taglines such as “powerful,” “innovative,” and “ground-breaking” for months now, but we’ve only gotten to see an inkling of what’s in store come November.  Many critics claim the system is geared to bring in a younger market-base for xbox, but I think it is something more.

Starting at $150.00 you’ll be able to connect your Kinect to your regular XBox360 (granted you still have 175MB available) and discover all the unknown.  The unit boasts that it has 2 camera lenses, for color and depth sensing, and 4 microphones that have the ability to cancel out noise and still be able to track up to 6 people (including 2 activate players).  Other features include a skeletal tracking system that can follow 46 points of movement, an audio system that recognizes multiple dilects and languages, and of course chatting for Xbox LIVE party chat and in-game voice chat.

Unfortunately aside from the Milo demo, Kinectimals, and some dancing ads, I haven’t heard many hardcore gaming uses for all this technological goodness.  All of the features above sound a lot less like a console and more like AI.  Not that I have a problem with Artificial Intelligence, or the possibility of your console actually playing with you, but we all remember what happened with HAL9000 in Space Odyssey.

Until next time, happy surfing.