How the Xbox One Kinect makes Killer Instinct tournament play even easier

There's a lot of talk of how the Xbox One's Kinect sensor will enhance gameplay, but most of what we've seen shown off is related to the system's overall entertainment value, allowing the user to easily switch between games and television. Is that all the Kinect is good for? Not quite, as Killer Instinct publisher Microsoft has explained how the Kinect sensor will enhance and simplify the fighting game's tournament process.

According to Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Isgreen, whenever a player sits in front of the Kinect while playing Killer Instinct, the peripheral will recognize that person's face and adjust the game to fit all of their user settings. Pretty neat, huh?

Isgreen explained: “We want to have features to set up tournaments with your friends. Say there are eight of you and you just start sitting down. I know a lot of people are like, ah, the Kinect camera in the room, I’m scared!

“But the coolness of being able to sit down, the controller pairs itself to you when you pick it up. It knows your buttons. It knows how you like to play. It knows what characters you want to play. You can just say Start, and go. It knows who you are in the tournament bracket, so it will just automatically do the matches correctly.”

Isgreen added, “If you have a character you love, it might primary select that character already. Your buttons are already configured based on you picking up that controller. It knows it’s you, so it can do the leaderboards correctly. All that’s possible on Xbox One – mid-fight, too. So, here, you play, you give me your controller, it reconfigures it to me."

Admittedly, I felt most of the Xbox 360 Kinect features were gimmicks, but this one actually sounds pretty useful. It doesn't necessarily make the game any more exciting, but I think simplifying the simple annoyance of having to adjust control settings is actually a pretty nice feature.

Who knows, maybe the Kinect will actually serve more of a purpose than you yelling out commands to watch TV. Of course, talk is cheap. I want to see this thing in action. I suppose the bigger question is if this type of feature will convince the NSA/Microsoft theorists that the Xbox One and Kinect might not be so bad after all.

[IGN]