Kinect Drops Real to Virtual Objects Launch Feature

Microsoft's Kinect spokesperson, Kudo Tsunoda, has revealed that another promising feature of the peripheral - the ability to translate real-world objects into a virtual one - will not be realised on its 10th November launch date.

"Being able to digitise real-world objects and take them into the virtual world - we saw a little bit of that at E3 last year, but it's not stuff that we have in any of the launch games right now," Tsunoda told Eurogamer, adding that "I think we're going to see a lot more games start using that as well as we go forward."

Since its initial unveiling at E3 last year, Kinect has gone from an enticing prospect for core gamers to a peripheral specifically targeting the casual market. Features and hardware capabilities have slowly been stripped since Microsoft's impressive showing in 2009.

The feature was best detailed last year in Lionhead's Milo demo, where Kate "drew" a picture on a piece of paper and held it up to the Kinect camera to 'pass' on to the virtual child. The peripheral transferred the image into the game's world and allowed Milo to recognise the basic shapes and colours.

Tsunoda was quick to point out the features that will be present in Kinect (and its launch games) when it arrives in a few months time, though. "Some of the stuff I've been super interested in creatively is the stuff we have in Kinect right now, where you have not only the full-body technology but being able to understand the intonation of somebody's voice and how they're saying something. Also the human recognition stuff we've built where you can step in front of the sensor and get signed into Xbox Live right away."

No digitisation? Is that a deal breaker for you? Tell us in the comments.