The stigma associated with kids who play video games is that they sit on the couch and don’t get any exercise. In fact, until about a decade ago, there were no games that involved doing more than just pressing a few buttons on a controller. Fast forward to today, and we have games like Dance, Dance Revolution that really revolutionized the way people play games. The Nintendo Wii continued this revolution by implementing a system that uses motion control and body movement to control a wide variety of games. Using the Wii-mote, gamers can play popular games like Wii Sports and Wii Fit to help get them off the couch and moving around while gaming. Microsoft’s answer to this phenomenon is Kinect, which will add the same motion capabilities to the 360, all without a controller.

The Kinect works very similarly to the Eye Toy for PlayStation. It is a camera that tracks all the movement of your body by analyzing your skeleton, so it can accurately detect the movements you make with your body. The Kinect watches your body movements as you make them and then interprets these movements for your in-game character, so when you jump, your character jumps. This is the closest we’ve come to getting directly into the game. Since the controls have a 1:1 ratio, if you move your arm to hit a baseball, you really need to make the movement at the right time. The same could be said for volleyball or any other sports game. This means some measure of actual skill in playing the game, rather than just hitting buttons at the right time.

Of course, these are not the only benefits of Kinect. Kinect also has motion controls for the games and movies available on the 360, so you can say something as simple as “Xbox Play” to have your Xbox play the movie you have on the disc, or any of the movies. in your queue on Netflix. This might seem pretty trivial as it’s just voice commands and many phones these days accept voice commands, but imagine the possibilities of receiving a phone call and not having to reach for the remote to stop the movie. Just say “Xbox Pause” and Kinect will pause your movie, allowing you to answer your phone call!