Xbox Kinect - My First Experience

As the winter holidays came, I found myself with a brand new Kinect for my xbox 360, conveniently just what I asked for.

I wiped it out and found set up fairly simple, though I must admit that no matter how cool the sensor is, it's a bit creepy when it sizes you up and follows your movements....

After getting the kinect set up, and goofing off with it for a while, I finally put in my first came Adventures.

I was able to get through only two short and rather uneventful levels of rallyball before the sensor decided I wasn't far enough away. So I tuned the kinect, recalibrated it, walked in and out of it's view a few times, adjusted it's height and location, moved the tv back so that it was now more than 8 feet away from me.

Still, the Kinect could not see my feet fully, and so even when the tuning worked out, the game would not see me, and the few fleeting times it could see me, it decided it could recognize me. And since I allowed it to get facial recognition (also creepy), I would at least hope it would have any problems recognizing me.

I spent two hours trying to troubleshoot the problem, and rearranged my whole living room, until finally giving up and going back to using my regular controller to leave the kinect area all together.

I am really disappointed that you have to be so far away from the kinect for it to work. On the commercials it certainly didn't show people that far away, and it really breaks my enthusiasm because we don't own a big screen, I'm near sighted and our living room just isn't that big. I know how to consider whether to get rid of the kinnect or the couch, and since I'm the only one who will play with the kinect, it's not going to be the couch that ends up going.

If microsoft is out there listening and watching, I'd like to plead for a kinect that can be used in smaller spaces then it currently needs, otherwise it's like saying the kinect is only for the upper class with huge living rooms and big screen tv's.

I'd also like to suggest you create a sleek and easy to apply kinect cover, for those of us who just aren't quiet ready to live with a device that can see, hear and recognize you all the time.