With Kinect, Microsoft Aims for a Game Changer

TIM NICHOLS measures fun.



A slim, 32-year-old psychologist, he spends his days behind a one-way mirror at Microsoft's video games research center here, watching people play the company's Xbox systems. He looks for smiles, listens for ecstatic squawks and logs triumphant gyrations. When a game is good, it elicits all the above and gets a "fun score" high enough for Microsoft to consider selling it.



And, of late, the fun quotient has skyrocketed.



The company's blend of game developers, interface whizzes and artificial-intelligence experts has built Kinect, a $150 add-on for the popular Xbox 360 console that hits stores next month. With its squat, rectangular shape and three unevenly spaced eyes, this black device looks like a genetically underserved creature from "Star Wars."



In fact, Kinect arrives with a healthy dose of sci-fi trappings. Microsoft has one-upped Sony and Nintendo by eliminating game controllers and their often nightmarish bounty of buttons. Kinect peers out into a room, locks onto people and follows their motions. Players activate it with a wave of a hand, navigate menus with an arm swoosh and then run, jump, swing, duck, lunge, lean and dance to direct their on-screen avatars in each game.



"I can't tell you how many times I have seen people try and do the moonwalk," says Mr. Nichols, as he recalls their first, curious encounters with their virtual mimics.



Kinect also understands voice commands. People can bark orders to change games, mute the volume or fire up offerings, like on-demand movies and real-time chatting during TV shows that flow through the Xbox Live entertainment service.



The mass-market introduction of Kinect — with its almost magical gesture and voice-recognition technology — stands as Microsoft's most ambitious, risky and innovative move in years. Company executives hope that Kinect will carry the Xbox beyond gamers to entire families. But on a grander note, the technology could erase a string of Microsoft's embarrassing failures with mobile phones, music players, tablets and even Windows from consumers' minds and provide a redemptive beat for the company.



"For me it is a big, big deal," says Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive. "There's nothing like it on the market."



Where Apple popularized touch-screen technology, Microsoft intends to bombard the consumer market with its gesture and voice offerings. Kinect technology is intended to start in the living room, then creep over time throughout the home, office and garage into devices made by Microsoft and others. People will be able to wave at their computer and tell it to start a videoconference with Grandma or ask for a specific song on the home stereo.



"I think this is the first thing out of the consumer side of Microsoft in a long, long time where they are in front of everyone else," says Joel Johnson, an editor at large at Gizmodo, the gadget site. "I want a Kinect in every room of my house, watching me and listening to what I am saying. It's so sci-fi and next level that it would be amazing."



The on-time arrival of amazing has become a rare occurrence at Microsoft, a fact not lost on investors or Microsoft's directors.



The company continues to rely on its Windows, Office and business software franchises for the bulk of its $62.5 billion in annual revenue. In high-growth areas like phones and tablets, Microsoft has long sold software but has watched Apple come out of nowhere to gobble up the most profits. With such successes, Apple overtook Microsoft in May as the world's most valuable tech company and has since swelled that lead to more than $62 billion. Microsoft's board gave Mr. Ballmer the fiscal equivalent of a timeout by docking his bonus over the last fiscal year, pointing to lackluster mobile technology and a dearth of innovation. And whether Kinect can revamp Microsoft's image as an innovator remains a big question.



Critics knock Kinect games as too easy and say the gesture technology still has annoying kinks. They also say Microsoft has had a nasty habit of gumming up its creative engines with bureaucracy.



"They often got lost in fights between all their divisions," Mr. Johnson says. "Anytime something becomes high-profile, middle management slows it down."


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