As those of you who read my last article know, I don’t think much of Apple’s “new” FaceTime video calling feature for the iPhone 4 – aside from a ridiculous name, it is highly limited only supporting iPhone to iPhone calls and only over WiFi. Kinect Video on the other hand, announced at E3 with the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 looks like a genuinely useful and well conceived implementation of video calling.
Microsoft are really capitalising on their ecosystem by allowing video calls not only just between Kinect users, but also to their massive Live Messenger community. This feature alone instantly makes Video Kinect hugely more useful than FaceTime.
Imagine if you will a pair of grandparents who live far away from their growing grandchildren – in Apple’s world grandkids and grandparents alike would need iPhone’s to see each other on tiny displays, you’d think they might have at least allowed you to call iChat on a Mac…but no. In Microsoft’s world the grandkids can use the Xbox with Kinect and see their grandparents on the family’s flat panel while the grandparent can simply use a PC with a webcam…..no additional investment required. Grandparents may even purchase an Xbox with Kinect purely for the purpose of staying in touch, and as an added bonus the kids can play Xbox when they visit.
I can see small businesses installing Kinect in their boardrooms to keep remote workers feeling included – people working from home have the choice to Kinect into the board room and utilise their panel to feel a part of things -but they also have the option to just be on their laptop, using messenger, from anywhere they like with a 3G modem. With the ability to have multiple participants in the call this could be far more efficient for SMBs than installing expensive Cisco and Polycom video conferencing solutions.
While there is no announcement yet, given the other integration being done between Windows Phone 7 Series and Xbox Live I find it hard to imagine down the track Windows Phone 7 won’t also get a piece of the Video Kinect action. Who knows, they might even allow it over 3G.
Well done Microsoft – Kinect is a clever name for what looks like a great innovation. It might actually be the first step in bringing video calling mainstream (Jetson’s style) and perhaps even making it useful.
