Microsoft has been talking about its “Project Natal” thingy for quite a while now, and, back at E3, they've decided to finally go official with it, while in the same time slapping it with a much more commercially-friendly name, the Kinect. Of course, the first impressions were pretty cool, and the same can be said about the technology itself, apart from one “tiny” detail: apparently, this thing will only support two active players at the same time.

This information has become available when Play, a very well-known retailer in the gaming world, revealed what seem to be the full specs of Microsoft's Kinect. Apparently, the controller sports colour and depth-sensing lenses, a voice microphone array and tilt motor for sensor adjustment. Plus, the device also features a horizontal field of view of 57 degrees, a vertical field of view of 43 degrees, plus a physical tilt range of around ± 27 degrees. The depth sensor range varies between 1.2m and 3.5m.

Additionally, the Kinect supports 320×240, 16-bit depth @ 30 frames/sec and 640×480, 32-bit colour @ 30 frames/sec data streams, plus 16-bit audio 16 kHz. It also comes equipped with an echo cancellation system that enhances voice input, plus an advanced speech recognition system.

And now, for the problem. According to the leaked info, the device will be able to track up to 6 people, but just 2 active players (with 20 joints per active player). This is not exactly fantastic, especially since both the Wii and the PS3 support up to four players.

Of course, there's plenty of room for improvement and we're pretty sure Microsoft will solve this issue on the future, but the fact remains: at first, just 2 players will be able to “Kinect” themselves to the Xbox 360, which is not something gamers will take lightly.


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