Microsoft's new gaming console - a response to its competitor, Nintendo's, Wii - "Kinect" has had a few operating problems that have resulted in recent accusations of racism. Basically, Microsoft Kinect has a login feature when initially turning the system on, that "recognizes" you, through the system's built in camera.
For example, if you are playing a season in NFL Madden 2011, instead of manually logging into your account which has your season saved on it, simply by turning the Kinect on, its camera is designed to "recognize" you and log you in automatically, saving you time and effort.
However, apparently the Kinect has had recent troubles recognizing dark skinned individuals. This lead to accusations of the designers purposefully programming the game console to not recognize individuals or certain ethnicity or skin tone.
The real problem is that Kinect's camera has failed to operate consistently in different levels of lighting. One reporter for CIO experimented with the inconsistent Kinect camera, and discovered that it only successfully recognized him 1/3 of the time.
Perhaps Microsoft should consider outsourcing the camera design to a company who's core competency is in the camera industry, to clean up these problems, especially since the camera recognition feature is something that is supposed to differentiate the Kinect gaming system from the Wii. Maybe it will also put the racism rumors to rest - as absued as they appear to be.
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