I’m kind of surprised that NMA didn’t mock the ambiguous used game policy, but I guess you can’t really make that funny. Besides, it’s more fun to make fun of the Xbox One’s overreliance on television.

To compare, here’s NMA’s take on the PS4 unveiling back in February.

Even with the numerous games announced for the platform at the event, NMA still wasn’t impressed. Can nothing appease them?

Gamasutra reports that both Germany and Australia have expressed concern over the new Kinect camera in the Xbox One. It’s been confirmed that the camera must be connected for the Xbox One to operate, and some fear this will lead to snooping for marketing purposes. Microsoft, of course, says it won’t be using it to violate privacy, but some aren’t so sure.

Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information Peter Schaar says that he needs to know if the Xbox One’s Kinect can store user information, and whether or not Microsoft can share that information with third parties. He goes so far to call the Xbox One and its potential to spy on living rooms a “twisted nightmare.” [Update: In the comments, Kenny tells us the statement from Schaar, when translated, merely says that he isn't concerned about Microsoft spying on people via Kinect.]

Civil Liberties Australia Director Tim Vines says that the Xbox One’s Kinect is a surveillance device under Australian law. As such, Microsoft will have to come forward and tell users who can access the information it collects. He also encourages Australians to skip out on the Xbox One if Microsoft doesn’t give users an option to turn off the Kinect camera.

Germany and Australia aren’t exactly huge game markets, but it does show that people are uncomfortable with the idea of constantly being watched. Sony’s PS4 isn’t much better as it ships with its own camera, but the Japanese company hasn’t outlined an Orwellian surveillance regime in a patent application either.

The Kinect for Windows team that its sample code is now open source under an Apache 2.0 license. The 22 samples are available in C#, C++ and Visual Basic.

So, why go open source? The team says that there are four reasons for the move:

The majority of the code will still remain proprietary, but the release of code samples should at least help push Kinect for Windows development into new areas. The sensor has already provided a number of unique applications, and developers being able to muck around with the code might yield even more interesting results.

All of this news was posted on Microsoft’s new Kinect development blog. It will be kept separate from the regular Kinect for Windows blog, and will focus entirely on “going behind the scenes with the K4W engineering team and will go deeper on the technology and APIs, share tips & tricks, and provide other tidbits of information relevant to those building K4W applications.”

[h/t: CNET]

A store in Japan had to ensure that I get no sleep tonight by creating this interactive store display that combines Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows and display window mannequins for a shopping experience straight out of hell.

I thought Japan couldn’t get any scarier, but holy sh*t, this is terrifying.

[h/t: Next at Microsoft]

VGLeaks, the source behind the recent next Xbox and PS4 specs leak, comes the latest round of leaks concerning Microsoft’s next generation Kinect hardware. We already know that the next Xbox may require Kinect to be plugged in at all times, but this latest rumor gets into the nitty gritty details of the hardware.

According to the rumor, here’s what we can expect from the next generation Kinect hardware:

The field of view for the next Kinect has been increased to 70 inches by 60 inches. That’s a pretty sizable increase from 57.5 inches by 43.5 inches. The resolution has been increased from 640×480 to 1920×1080. The latency has also been decreased from 90 ms to 60 ms.

All in all, the next Kinect is a substantial upgrade in pretty much every respect. Games utilizing the technology will be able to detect more limited range of movements, and capture more parts of the body. The original Kinect was going to have finger tracking, and that feature may come back in the newest Kinect hardware.

Of course, all of this is rumor for now. We won’t know anything for sure until Microsoft lifts the veil on its next generation console. The PS4 will be unveiled tonight, however, so Microsoft better show its hand sooner than later.

Microsoft claims it has sold more than 76 million Xbox 360 consoles. In addition, 24 million Kinect sensors have been sold to those Xbox owners.

Microsoft also released information and statements that make it clear the company is eyeing more than just video games. Expect the next Microsoft console to be a complete home multimedia device, with connectivity to multiple services and devices.

“Yes, we started with video games, but we have been on a journey to make Xbox the center of every household’s entertainment,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of Microsoft Interactive Entertainment.

According to Microsoft, Xbox users watched and played 18 billion hours of entertainment last year. Usage of apps on the Xbox also grew 57%, which isn’t surprising considering the number of apps that were added in 2012.

The catch is that using these services isn’t free on an Xbox – an Xbox LIVE Gold subscription is required to access multiplayer gaming, Netflix Watch Instantly, Amazon Instant Video, and more. Subscriptions to Xbox LIVE now stand at 46 million. Considering that subscriptions start at $5 per month, Microsoft is taking in over $230 million per month for things that Sony’s PlayStation 3 provides consumers with for free.

“We believe that Xbox is being used by more people in the household, during more hours in the day and for more forms of entertainment,” said Mehdi. “People are using Xbox in the morning to work out with the Kinect Nike+ Fitness program, kids are watching cartoons, families are enjoying movies, and of course people are playing blockbuster games like Halo 4.”

Kotaku scrounged up some more details on the next Xbox from the guy who tried to sell a Durango development kit last year. He reveals more fascinating details on the console, including the above patent being put to use in the latest Kinect hardware.

The latest round of rumors confirm once again that Microsoft will be shipping Kinect as a standard peripheral with the next Xbox. The hardware has also been greatly improved to feature better tracking, and can now detect up to six people at once. Better hardware is always good, but Microsoft may be taking Kinect into dangerous territory with its next iteration.

The rumors claim that the next Xbox won’t even operate unless the Kinect hardware is plugged in and calibrated. The camera will also always be watching you as it’s on to perhaps implement the aforementioned patent, or provide some new gameplay innovation that we can’t even fathom yet. The new Kinect will also reportedly be able to track individual finger movements and detect facial expressions which makes it even creepier.

Getting away from Kinect, the rumors also reveal that the next Xbox will require every game to be installed on the console’s 500GB HDD. It’s a nice step up from the 20GB HDD the original Xbox 360 launched with, but it has the potential to quickly fill due to next-gen Xbox games shipping on dual-layer Blu-ray discs.

The most interesting part about this particular rumor, however, is how the games will install. Unlike the current Xbox 360, you won’t have to wait for the game to install before you start playing. The console can immediately start playing the game while installing it in the background. That’s an incredibly useful feature and will hopefully be present across both the next Xbox and the PS4.

The rumors also address the new controller and how the next Xbox will handle multi-tasking. First, the controller will be a “natural evolution” of the Xbox 360′s celebrated gamepad, but you won’t be able to use the Xbox 360′s gamepad on the new console as Microsoft is using a new proprietary wireless technology.

As for multitasking, the console can pause a game and let a user access social media or other content while the game remains paused. Users can also suspend games, save their progress in local memory, and jump into a second game without having to actually save within the title. Such functionality has been sorely lacking in current generation consoles, and will hopefully be standard across Microsoft’s and Sony’s machines.

Finally, the specs released by this newest source match up with the specs released by VGLeaks a few weeks ago. The next Xbox will feature an eight core CPU clocked at 1.6GHz, 8GB of RAM, a D3D11 capable GPU clocked at 800MHz, and built in Wi-Fi.

It’s important to note that most, if not all of this, is purely rumor for now. The source seems legitimate, but it could all turn out to be bunk. If this is true, however, I fear for Microsoft’s next-generation console. The requirement of Kinect always being on combined with an anti-used game online DRM solution would make the next Xbox a very anti-consumer device that would deservedly be trounced at retail.

For all our sake, let’s hope the next Xbox keeps the upgraded specs, but ditches the anti-consumer Orwellian tech.

The Verge reports that the next Xbox “will support wake on voice, natural language controls, and speech-to-text.” The current Kinect can only recognize simple speech patterns that are pre-programmed into the software. The next Xbox will greatly expand this to include natural interaction – the kind of voice recognition that you see in Apple’s Siri and other similar software.

So, what does this mean for games? The Verge uses the example of a user being able to ask the Xbox, “What are my friends playing?” and the system would immediately bring up the player’s friend list. Other examples include the user being able to ask questions with the system returning a relevant answer, no doubt provided by Bing.

The real advantage here is if more games started supporting voice commands or interactions. The current Kinect’s voice sensor has only been used in a small selection of games, most notably Mass Effect 3. It would be far more interesting if something like Peter Molyneux’s ill-fated Project Milo were to launch on the next Xbox featuring natural interaction with an on-screen character.

This rumor is just the latest to hit the net in regards to Microsoft’s next console. Just yesterday, a rumor came out saying that the next Xbox would feature an anti-used game system in the form of always online DRM. The console’s specs, which paint the system as being fairly powerful, has also been leaked.

PrimeSense recently announced that its motion sensing technology for mobile phones has shrunk enough to be able to fit comfortably into mobile devices. The hardware is called Capri 1.25, and features a number of enhancements over the past versions of the technology.

Capri 1.25 is 3D sensing technology at its heart, and as such, will be judged by its ability to scan the environment around it. The latest hardware has the following features:

All of the above technical information may not mean much to you, so here’s a video that shows what PrimeSense’s technology may be capable of in the near future:

Will the Capri 1.25 be able to do all that right now? Of course not, but PrimeSense obviously thinks that 3D motion tracking is the future. They think it will be in everything from smartphones to store displays.

Speaking of smartphones, we may start seeing the technology appearing in mobile devices later this year. PrimeSense says the chipset will be available in mid to late 2013 for those who able to buy 100,000 chipsets annually.

[h/t: Fast Company Design]

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept Microsoft Research project designed to push the boundary of living room immersive entertainment by blending our virtual and physical worlds with projected visualizations. The effects in the video are rendered in real time and are captured live — not special effects added in post processing.

The system uses a Kinect for Windows camera and a projector to create the effects seen in the video below. It scans the geometry of a room using the Kinect, then uses its measurements to adapt its projected visuals “in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics.” Microsoft claims the feature can extend the field of view beyond the TV, change the appearance of a room, or induce apparent motion.

It sounds silly, yes, but give the video a look. This is the sort of impressive technology that gamers should hope is part of the next generation of console hardware. Also, it may very well be a precursor to the holodeck-style gaming experiences of the future.