Microsoft Kinect 2.0 "Durango" Specifications: Improved Gaming Experience

Play Station 4 might be just around the corner and apparently, so is the next Xbox – 720. A necessary accessory of the Xbox for so many – the Kinect, will also have a successor, as well – Kinect 2.0. As always, rumors and speculations are a norm and we’re not witnessing new information that comes to shed some light on the possible specifications of the upcoming Kinect. And these aren’t even the first that we’re witnessing.

Codenamed as “Durango”, the next Kinect could be crucial to the upcoming Xbox 720, because gamers are looking for more interactive gaming methods. Of course, Durango or Kinect 2.0 will improve and will become “smarter”, being able to know and understand more about your movements. We won’t bother you too much and get right down to some possible and most important specs of Kinect 2.0, according to recent leaks. Do have a look at the more detailed picture below. Again, take this with a grain of salt, since nothing’s sure for the moment:

• New mode for both seated and standing players
• Will track up to six players, instead of only two
• A much bigger field of view allowing for a much larger space to play
• The RGB stream will be of higher quality and resolution
• The sensor will be able to “understand” much smaller objects
• Higher depth stream allows for objects separation in close depth proximity, captures depth curvature around edges better.
• 1920×1080 color stream, 512×424 depth stream, added infrared stream, USB 3.0, 60ms latency

If you didn’t know, hear it now: Kinect was and still is the fastest selling gadget of all time, managing to sell 10 million units in less than 4 months – 120 days! Really, really impressive! It will be really interesting to see how will Kinect 2.0 help Microsoft in its fight against Sony, as soon as Play Station 4 gets released.

The fact that the increased field of view will allow for up to 6 players is also awesome. Think about how developers will make use of this and what creative games will see the daylight thanks to this! I can’t wait, really. Kinect 2.0 will probably maintain the same form, without visible changes. Another interesting and helpful addition is the infrared sensor. What exactly does this mean? Well, that will be possible for Kinect 2.o to understand your body’s movements even under poor lighting conditions, or, if you want, even in the dark!

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Kinect 2.0 will also be able to read the position of joints and will also detect sideways poses. This should allow for more evolved gaming and more complex movements. However, what we really, realy would like to see is a reduced latency. All users want that the time between their movement is made in real world and it appears on the screen to be as reduced as possible. So, let’s hope they will really improve that.

What I would recommend, without knowing if this is even possible, is for Kinect 2.0 to have a small moving camera that would be able to see even more in height. Currently, if we are to believe to these leaks it will increase its field of you in left, right and behind, if we can say so. Would be awesome to see it detect “above”, as well.