What outpaced the ubiquitous Apple iPad and iPhone in terms of sales? According to the Guinness World Records, it’s the Kinect for the Xbox 360. Kinect has officially become the Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device. The device enables users to play video games without the use of a traditional controller. On average, 133,333 Kinects were sold each day between November 2010 and January 2011. The launch of the device was more successful than either the iPhone or the iPad’s launch. “The sales figures here speak for themselves,” says Gaz Deaves, Editor of Guinness World Records…

Steven Bathiche might have just become Microsoft’s most popular developer for the time being. He has created a slew of new tech demos utilizing Microsoft Kinect that will enable users to interact with displays in ways never done before. One demonstration — of a “wedge” lens — in particular could solve the problem of creating a 3D image without active- or passive-style glasses. The image on the screen orientates itself to the user by using Kinect’s tracking mechanism; the exciting thing is that it can do this for more than a single user. Either way, it is pretty cool stuff, and we hope that the…

From an industry perspective, 2010 was a fascinating year in video games. We saw both Microsoft and Sony successfully release motion control add-ons to existing systems – something that a few years ago, would have seemed unbelievable. (And frankly, even though we here at Techi did predict it, we were all a bit surprised how successful Kinect was). The Xbox 360 will likely outsell the Wii in North America, while Call of Duty: Black Ops outsold most games total sales in its first month. Meanwhile, depending on sales in December, the potential of Sony’s Playstation 3 may remain just that. And though…

Ever since Microsoft’s Kinect hit the market, it has been a hot accessory for the Xbox 360. However, it was only a matter of time before some clever hackers managed to break into its guts and use it to control even more than what had been initially planned. Now we have seen what those hackers could come up with, and it has ranged from the intriguing to the downright naughty. So here are a few videos to keep you in the loop with what people have been working on recently. Warning: some might be more disturbing than others. Here is a demonstration of how Kinect could be used in sex games, as if teens don’t have…

How cool is this? The answer, before you read any further or watch the video for additional information, is this: really cool. The Biological Cybernetics Lab at Tsukuba University here demonstrate a robotic arm that mimics a user’s movement via Kinect-like camera. It can recognize over 100 different hand shapes (after all, some of us, myself included, have pretty weird hands), and checks over one hundred times per second what position your hand is in, so it can adjust itself accordingly. The idea is not only to provide a real-time robotic control solution, but also an intuitive way to program…

Hands-free just got hands-on, as Microsoft’s would-be Wii-killer, Kinect, is the first to get its own sex game. Though the game (which at time of writing, is still nameless), produced by adult videogame developer ThriXXX, is not an official port – you need a PC running Windows 7 – it… sorta looks interesting, a little, I guess? There’s a video, but out of respect for the thousands of parents obviously browsing Techi with children on their laps, you’re gonna have to click Read More to see it. Basically, it works like every other Kinect game: wave your hands around to accomplish a task. You thought…

If you have been following Techi, you probably have seen unusual uses for the Kinect. A gesture-controlled robot might have been something you looked into, or you might have found out how you could learn to dance using the Kinect. Now, some smart dude found out a way to use OpenKinect to communicate with his computer, and then uses a NES emulator to get Mario movin’. Even though there is a bit lag in the video, the idea of how to do this is great. What if this was installed for other games, like Call of Duty, Halo Reach, and Madden. Man, would that be cool….

While skepticism remains high about how much success Kinect can achieve, Microsoft is proud to shove that skepticism in people’s faces. The company announced that they have sold over 2.5 million units of Kinect, with the potential of 5 million units shipped by year’s end becoming a possibility. Microsoft’s controller-less controller (that’s funny) is apparently doing better than many expected, especially with the Xbox 360 crowd assumed to be primarily hardcore first-person-shooter types. Even more impressive is the fact that Kinect is experiencing this growth while only having around…

In many ways, Xbox 360 Kinect is simply another tech product. Microsoft, like so many companies before it, is attempting to expand its demographic reach and maybe rebrand a key product in the process. But Kinect itself may be indicative of more than just one company’s attempts to make some cash. After all, like the iPhone before it, Kinect is a new model for interfaces. It might not be the very first gesture controlled system; but it’s certainly the coolest and most accessible. As a result, it might mean the success of Kinect, like other transformations in how we interact technology, may be a sign…

Surely you’ve seen your share of Kinect hacks in the last little while – hell, even last week I posted a couple here on Techi. Microsoft was originally not down with this, and implied potential legal action against anyone modifying their device. But it seems they’ve now had a change of heart, claming Kinect was always ‘open by design’, and that they’re happy to have folks write all sorts of drivers for all manner of Kinect-based ballyhoo. “What has happened,” says Microsoft’s Alex Kipman to NPR, “is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t…