Kinect's future: A game controller in everything

Microsoft is spending half a billion dollars to make sure that when you hear the word Kinect you think "the future of video games."

But Microsoft believes that the real potential for the voice recognition, motion-based technology is how they plan to use it with cell phones, computers and perhaps in the military and health industries.

"Think about a world where machines understand what people want from them," said Kinect Creative Director Kudo Tsunoda. "You can see that extrapolate out to a host of other devices."

Microsoft promised when they launched the $150 Xbox 360 Kinect add-on this week that it would make you the controller. That means it allows gamers to play soccer, race on a hoverboard and raft down rapids all by simply going through the motions in front of your television. The Kinect also allows you to video chat with friends, flip through the console's menus with a swipe of your hand and zip through movies by plucking at the air in front of your face.

Despite the sometimes magical moments it creates, Kinect is really just a collection of off-the-shelf cameras, sensors and microphones packed into an array that sits atop or under your television. It looks surprisingly like the head of the lovable, titular robot star of Pixar movie Wall-E.

What Microsoft is betting on isn't that plastic peripheral, it's the software and algorithms that Kinect uses to do its job. A job that includes not just watching a gamer's movements and translating it into on-screen video game action, but also using the spoken word to take direction, recognizing who is playing a game and, perhaps ultimately, what that person wants from their gaming experience.

"From a broad Microsoft perspective," Microsoft's director of the
Kinect technology, Alex Kipman added, "we believe in a more natural way for people to interact with technology. People don't like to hold gadgets in their hands, that includes keyboards and mice.