At tonights pre-show keynote by Microsoft the Avatar Kinect feature was fully unveiled. During the CES keynote it was touted as being “the new way to socialize” by allowing those households with Kinects to interact with their friends in a whole new way. The key feature of this unveiling was the facial recognition the software alows to help animate expressions on to the digital versions of yourself.
This is more a feature tailored to the casual friendly crowd of course, though it may have some fun merits for those gamers who simply want to interact in new ways with their friends that don’t live close enough to do couch communication.
The interactive areas are set up as TV talk shows and videos can be taken from teh experience and uploaded to Facebook for future humiliation. Steve Ballmer says that Avatar Kinect will be available for Xbox Live Gold members only this Spring and comes with fifteen stages.