Kinect goes beta

KITS FOR Microsoft's Kinect beta have been spotted going out to selected fanbois with an updated dashboard.

Kinect's development has hardly been an enigma wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in cloak and dagger secrecy. Well, that's what Microsoft would have preferred but, if there's one thing its fanbois like to do, it's spread leaks and rumours about upcoming products.

It comes as no surprise then that Kinect's beta development and participation programme has been given the full online treatment, complete with screen grabs. Over at Joystiq you can see a series of screenshots taken by fanbois invited to the Kinect beta programme including some of the dashboard updates Microsoft is working on.

The Vole has embedded the Kinect dashboard into its Xbox Live service and is offering a fuller mini-guide for gamers. The Avatar editing toolset has also been given a work over and the Avatars have been moved to the side on the screen. Unfortunately, the shots of the male avatar look all too much like Simon Cowell after a crash diet.

We don't yet know if the Vole is working on any games where you can shoot Cowell but Microsoft is going to pack the Kinect hardware off to the beta participants and they're expected to receive some games titles to play. Joystiq's sources said they were going to get Kinect Sports, Kinect Joyride and Kinect Adventures.

Xbox fanbois will have a couple of more months dabbling in beta and reporting back to Microsoft so the Vole can make any tweaks before the retail release date that's coming up in November. µ