Microsoft’s Kinect peripheral for the Xbox 360 – allowing gamers to interact in their environment similarly to the Nintendo Wii – has been an unquestionable and unprecedented success.
Not only did it sell 10 million in its first two months on the way to becoming the fastest selling consumer electronic device of all time, but it has also helped the Xbox 360 on its way to becoming the number one gaming portal of choice.
With such an impressive résumé already, rumors are beginning to circulate about its purported successor, and if the claims turn out to be truthful, we could quite easily see Microsoft outdo itself in a similar manner to the way Activision continues to smash its own records with Call Of Duty.
Eurogamer.net is claiming the next Kinect iteration could improve in leaps and bounds – with more advanced hardware enabling the device to lip-read as well as detect one’s mood.
Due to being a USB-based device, the original Kinect released towards the latter part of last year was limited in that the depth sensor had an artificial limit of 30 FPS, whilst its resolution stood at a meager 320×240. Kinect 2 apparently will not be dogged by sub-par hardware, and will reportedly be bundled along with the next Xbox console – expected to arrive in 2013.
An unnamed yet reliable source is reported to have told Eurogamer:
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?
The Kinect 2 (or whatever it will be eventually named) will be able to recognize volume and pitch of human speech as well as a variety of facial expressions, the report continues.
At this early stage, Microsoft has predictably declined to comment. With the device not expected realistically for over a year, though, it’s impossible for rumor not to spread like wildfire.
We also reported on a story last week that Redmond-based Microsoft may be releasing two different consoles next time around with one focused on gaming primarily, and the other serving as a more entertainment-based hub – concentrating on streaming services as much as anything else.
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