Okay Geek Farm
Microsoft denies Kinect can get better through firmware updates
Ricardo Trejo
Eurogamer reported a few days ago that Microsoft was currently working behind the scenes on a future firmware update that could levy the artificial limitations set to the Kinect hardware, and “quadruple” the Kinect’s accuracy. However, Microsoft came out of their wizard chambers yesterday to throw this rumor out the window - to the dismay of countless of Kinect owners everywhere.
The original story described how by upping the resolution in which the Kinect camera views its surroundings from 320x240 to 640x480, the Kinect could in effect read a player’s movements at a much higher rate of speed, reducing the noticeable lag on many Kinect titles.
Microsoft has since refuted that idea, even going so far to say that the Kinect is fine as is, and doesn’t require any sort of accuracy modification.
“We’re constantly working to expand and improve on experiences for Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE, however, this rumour is completely unsubstantiated,” a Microsoft spokesman told CVG. “We couldn’t be more pleased with the fidelity of the technology and clearly consumers agree given we sold more than 2.5 million units around the world in the first 25 days Kinect was on the market.”
This is a bit of a disappointment seeing as developers and hobbiests who have teared down the camera peripheral for mods and hacking purposes have already been able to manage 1:1 tracking on the Kinect - even if it is to just get results like these.
