First of all, nobody said you need 12 feet. 12 feet was just a reference to the thread starter who said he has 12 feet between his TV and the couch. In such an environment Kinect will of course work fine right out of the box. But saying that setting up Kinect is easy and takes no time just because your home is perfectly suited for Kinect is a little silly. That's like a 8 feet tall man saying it's easy to dunk a basketball. Most people have their furniture set up differently with much less space between TV and couch. For example I've read Kinect reviews on other gaming sites that stated they tried Kinect in a whole number of reviewers homes and absolutely every time the furniture needed to be somehow rearranged for Kinect. And of course how much space you need also really depends on on how tall you are, a tall man will need more distance than a child/small man.

As for lighting: correct lighting is absolutely no problem in games - because games usually only use the infrared TOF camera. But it's a huge problem for the facial recognition/Kinect ID because that feature uses the standard RGB camera. That's most probably exactly the problem JaggedSac has.

The good thing is that Kinect ID is insanely easy and can be done in little over a single minute.

Then you have a tiny living room. Anyone with a tv over 40" for example  should have it placed no closer then 8-9 feet from their couch. Do the math. If your tv is smaller then obviously less space is needed but to have less than 6 feet between the tv and couch means you should adjust your livingroom layout anyways or your tv should be no bigger than around 30".  The requirements are not as demanding as you and some other people seem to be making it out to be. 6 feet of space is not very much. If someone has a livingroom no bigger than a bathroom then they probably can't afford Kinect in the first place or live in a super tiny apartment.

Ah, that's my problem, I was looking in the box the 360 Kinect bundle came in for it.

We're takling law of averages here.  More people with large rooms will (probably) have a large coffee table or other object in the way even if their couch is eight to nine feet away (which I'd bet it often isn't.  People, even those with large TVs, tend to put the couch 6 to 7 feet from the TV).  Then there is the fact that it is likely that there are more people with smaller rooms vs larger rooms.

I don't think anyone's making this out to be bigger than it is and the whole thing started as a response to why some critics have mentioned this.  If you put the camera above the TV you should be able to get away with 6 feet from what I've seen.  So most people will be fine, but there is no doubt that, compared to Wii/Move, which by design of their games/tech aren't generally interested in seeing your lower body, more people are going to be moving coffee tables to play Kinect than with those because you can stand behind a coffee table with Wii/Move.

That's why a lot of technical reviews are mentioning it - because it's true.  You seem to be being overly defensive to a couple of back and forth discussions in a non-combative thread IMO.

Um its not hard to move a coffee table. I always moved it when I played my gf's Wii and Wii sports. Didn't feel like ramming my chins into the table. These arguments are getting ridiculous if its about moving a coffee table. People have been doing it for 4 years with the Wii.

OK I never considered moving our coffee table or the huge bean bag we have in our Family as part of the setup. Just like I dont consider them part of the setup for our Wii.  We move them out of the way for Wii play also. 

Also dont consider the KinectID as part of the setup.  You dont need to do it. You dont need it to play games.  You use it to train the 360 so you can enjoy the autosign in feature.  It certainly wasnt difficult.  Just took a few minutes.

As for space needed. Honestly we have a 50" TV  and when I am standing up 6 feet away from it that seems to close. Looking directly at it my field of vision isnt much past the right and left edges.  I am sitting here 2 feet from my 22" computer monitor.

It's not necessary to get viscious and make attacks about people's financial status. Please watch your tone. There's no need to be nasty and defensive. It's just a game.

My gaming room is not a full living room, but a secondary room attached to my bedroom. It is, indeed, not enormous, and it only has a 32" LCDTV in it. It also, however, has my desktop computer, couch, DVDs, video games, blu-rays, and two coffee table-like chests which I use for storage of gaming equipment. This works excellently for normal play of my 360, PS3, and Wii, but obviously it's not ideal for Kinect.

http://kotaku.com/5680506/configuring-a-room-for-kinect-a-tale-of-two-houses

Well Brian Crecente would seem to disagree!

The point you seem to want to ignore - and if you're willing to insult a senior mod then I guess you're going to continue to ignore - is that no-one is saying EVERYONE will have issues.  Life isn't black and white, and you should deal with that.  What is being noted is that SOME PEOPLE are definately going to have trouble due to the space requirements, and that Kinect is the most space demanding of all the current devices on the market.

Just because you didn't have trouble doesn't mean that those who do are wrong and that the whole topic is WRONG.

Some people won't have space, some people - this would include myself - have very heavy, expensive coffee tables that take some moving and which we are reluctant to move regularly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cV-x62DQa0c

This amount of space works fine. It would be interesting to find just how much smaller of a room it can work at.