I’ve now seen it in action, and it’s some impressive technology.  The issue is, the games just are not just that impressive and I don’t think they are outdoing the Nintendo Wii when it comes to games.

Let’s face it, the Wii is solely based on movement of the controller.  You get two of them when you incorporate the nunchuck.  And with the strategically placed buttons you get the best of both worlds.  Not only do your motions matter, but you can hit a button for items of a game that require more complex movements.  This in turn makes for more precise game play.

From what I’ve seen of the Kinect, theres no controller.  The games seem responsive, but I they really needed to simply controlls for a game.  This in effect makes the game even less real than it was before.  In making the games simpler and more intuitive this increases demographics of those who are interested in games.  This makes the moms and the little ones more happy to play a game and it gets them moving around.

I wanted to see some of the fighting games, but I haven’t seen it in person, only videos of such games.  It seems responsive in the video but the motions that were being made were very exact and I couldn't tell if they were perfectly in sync with the movements of the characters in the games.

Where I can see this device shining is for exercising games such as EA active.  This would be perfect as you don’t have cords hanging around you and your movements would feel more natural.  It is better for those who may be a little more overweight so that they can actually use the device. 

Already owning a Wii and setting up my living room for it, I can’t see myself forking over a 150 USD accessory, considering I could just go out and get a Wii for 50 USD more, and it’s already proven itself as a fun system to interact with others. I’m going to wait on the Kinect untill it’s proven itself on some others and I see some of the games that will be coming out for it.  I don’t feel that I need something that would replace the Wii at this time.  I feel that the Wii is still superior because of at least having a controller, but time will tell.  After all there’s nothing to say that Xbox doesn’t come out with specialized controllers to work with the device, but then your talking about the price of a Wii.

Amazon is touting that this will cost 150 USD and be released in November.

With all of the hype around mp3 players these days its good to know that there are some good music players that do what they were first intended to do.  And that’s play some great quality music.

The Sansa Fuze by SanDisk is an excellent example of one of these devices.  I have one for myself and then even 2 for my kids.  They are built well enough that I can trust my 4 year old with one of them.  Not to mention they will not break the bank if something happens to one of them.

The retail price of the 8 gig version is around 70 USD at the time of this writing.  But if you need more space that that this model does come with a port for a micro sd card.  This will enable you to put on extra music without breaking the bank. 

Also, getting music on the device is a snap, there are no music managers that you need to use with the device, All you really need to do is plug it into your machine and drop all the mp3’s that you would like to listen to on it.

The Fuze has a big enough screen so that you can see what your doing, but it is small enough that you can take it anywhere.  Also, it doesn’t have any moving parts as it only uses 8 gigs of flash memory.

The Fuze retails for 69.99 at Amazon.com and comes in a 2, 4, and 8 gigabyte storage capacity.  Go out there an treat yourself to one of them for the gym, maybe one for home, and you will definitely want one for your next vacation.