In theory, Kinect represents a fascinating and potentially revolutionary approach to how we interact with our home theaters. In practice, it's a generational improvement over its Xbox 360 predecessor but still has a ways to go.
First, the positive: When it works, Kinect is a showstopper. And it works most of the time. I sit down, and it sees me and almost immediately signs me in. "Hi, Kirk!" the Xbox says. I say, "Xbox, go to Ryse: Son of Rome," and the game snappily fires up. I play for a few minutes. In the middle of a level, I say, "Xbox, go home," and the console pauses the game and immediately pulls out to the home screen. From there, I can tell my Xbox to watch TV, or open up Netflix, or check out what my Xbox Live friends are doing online. All very neat.28
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But then, I'm into this kind of stuff. I love ambitious new gadgets and I forgive them when they don't work perfectly. I sense that for something like this to be fully embraced by the mainstream, it needs to work 100% of the time. The remote-control the Kinect means to replace works 100% of the time, after all.29
After a couple weeks of testing in a couple of different rooms, I'd say the Xbox One's Kinect works about... 80-85% of the time. Not a terrible percentage, but not enough to call consistent, either. The camera mishears me frequently enough to be annoying. Each time I have to repeat myself—"Xbox. Xbox. Xbox go to Skype"—I'm that much closer to just ditching it and picking up the controller.
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