Nyko reveals Zoom for Kinect coming to US next month

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Those of you who have picked up Kinect may not have been overly impressed with the games line-up so far, as it’s predominantly casual by nature.

That’s set to change though, with Child of Eden just released (a quality futuristic psychedelic shoot-em-up) and games such as Ryse (from Crytek), Rise of Nightmares (a Sega horror title) and of course Kinect Star Wars in the pipeline.

One problem some folks have with Kinect isn’t the range of games, however, but the physical constraints of the peripheral itself. It requires a good 8 to 10 feet of space in front of your TV (the latter is necessary for two players), which many simply don’t have.

Enter a solution for those who have smaller living rooms – the Zoom for Kinect from Nyko Technologies.

This reduces the space requirement for Kinect gameplay by around 40%, and is simply a clip-on wide-angle lens with no extra battery or calibration requirements. The device blends pretty well with the Kinect unit, too.

Zoom for Kinect is coming out next month in the US priced at $30, and we’d imagine it will make its way over to the UK in the autumn.

By all accounts the invention went down well at E3. Chris Arbogast, Director of Marketing at Nyko, commented: “The success of the Zoom at E3 was outstanding and we are incredibly excited to help expand the already thriving fanbase of Kinect gamers, allowing even more people to enjoy the thrills of being the controller.”

The only point of contention is whether the lens affects the accuracy of the motion detection in any way, which we guess you’ll only find out when using it. E3 testers don’t seem to have been moaning, though…

We’re also not sure what the lens does to those pictures Kinect snaps of players making fools of themselves running on the spot and jumping imaginary hurdles. Although many people likely turn those auto-snaps off after a while, anyway…

Tags: Xbox