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Microsoft Launches Avatar Kinect
mikejuk writes "Is Avatar Kinect a world-changing innovation or is it just silly? The idea is simple enough. It uses Kinect to determine body position and facial expression and maps these in real-time onto an avatar displayed on the screen along with other similar avatars. The big question is: what is it good for? The simple answer is that you can hide behind your avatar. It is an opportunity for anyone who feels less than confident about their appearance to become a performer — Microsoft is running a stand-up-comedian-via-avatar competition, for example. The internet has long provided an anonymous platform where users can express themselves, and Avatar Kinect extends this to facial and body expressions. Perhaps this is how video phone calls finally catch on — I'll get my avatar to phone you."
Finally, we can actually have the thing that we've been calling those stupid static (or worse, animated) pictures. A picture isn't an avatar. It's just a picture. An avatar is a full representation of the person hiding behind it, and with this software and the kinect (which is commercial, easy to acquire hardware for the geeks interested in this) we can finally have *real* avatars.
I think this is incredibly cool and a substantial step towards fullbody digital interactions over the internet being available to the man on the (first world country) street.
You should turn signatures off.
Is Avatar Kinect a world-changing innovation or is it just silly?
We've been asked this question before sometime around 2001. Back then it was Matrox and not Microsoft, and it was called HeadCasting
The answer... it was just plain silly. The G550 was a failure for everything except extreme multi-monitor work and HeadCasting was a completely ignored feature.
I'm not sure about others, but for family and friends I'd rather see them when I talk to them, and for the rest of the people on my Steam "friends" list I'd prefer not even being able to hear them let alone see some stupid 3D image they hide behind.
"they ALREADY have the hardcore audience down pat"
The Xbox 360 is completely dead in Japan.
The Xbox 360 is completely dead everywhere in Europe outside of the UK.
Microsoft doesn't have anything 'down' with the Xbox 360.
"Considering everyone I know with a Wii has maybe 3 games"
The Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 all have attach rates around 8.
"They have the hardcore market, not much growth there anymore for them"
The PS2 sold 100+ million consoles after it reached 50 million and dropped in price to $199 from $299.
"they have a real shot at taking the #3 slot in mobile"
Microsoft's mobile marketshare is plummeting each quarter. And Windows Phone 7 has a worldwide marektshare of 1 percent.
"The PS3 was waaay too expensive at launch and now the one two punch of the hack all over the news for weeks and Netflix making Blu Ray for most folks a non starter I'd say they are never gonna pull out of dead last this round."
The PS3 is outselling the Xbox 360 in 2011 by a large amount while still being 100 dollars more expensive and Microsoft blowing half a billion dollars on advertising and PR in 2011.
The Xbox 360 is in last place in worldwide installed base and has been for quite some time.
Stop reading fanboy fake sales number sites to avoid making a fool of yourself in the future.
stuff that no Xbox would have ever cared about that has been done for years with webcams or Sony's Eye Toy suddenly is 'innovative!!!' and 'amazing!!!'.
Well.
The hobbyists and computer vision people seem to be enjoying buying the things, so there must be something inherent different from webcams and the eye toy.
Even if it ends up being a complete flop, the research sector of other places should still benefit so huzzah?
but this is a nice incremental step forward. When my avatar looks like one of the characters in Mass Effect (lip-syncing included) I'll be impressed. I suppose we'll need to wait for the next generation console and Kinect 2.