Microsofts Kinect in comparison to Sony Move and Wii Motion Plus

There has been a lot of fuss about Microsofts approach to motion controls, called Kinect.
Let me clear up a few things what Microsoft is doing different to Nintendo's Wii Motion Plus and Sony's Move controllers.

First of all Microsoft did not decide to plainly copy what's been working off Nitnendos Wii Mote and enhancing it here and there as Sony has done.
What Microsoft did is a little more ambitious.
They said "ok motion controlls are great, but why do i need a controller at all?".

This is the core feature of Kinect, you do not need a controller.
Kinect works in the way, that it detects your bodies movement by a smart camera/software solution that tracks your body movements and calculates a skeleton based on this data.


This means you're complete free of any controller, but also means you have no additional buttons you can press to activate other features.
This means kinect can only work for certain games which you can see from the launch lineup Microsoft announced.

For ingame menus it's not that hard to activate a button, you just stretch out your hand to the screen and move the pointer (which is controlled by the movement of your hand) to the button you want to press.
And then just hold your hand there to activate that button.

This works pretty good as i can tell since i got to play a couple games on this years Gamescom event in Germany, Cologne.

The links below show you exactly how your body movements can control Kinect and two exclusive interviews directly from leading Microsoft employees.

Hands on Kinect Adventures
Exclusive Kinect Interview with Microsoft's Michael Johnson
Exclusive Hands on Kinectimals Presentation with Yutaka Noma