Kinect uses less than 10 per cent of Xbox 360's processor

[Squilliam]

Gnizmo said:

This makes the most sense to me. I would hope this is referencing the minimum needed for any interaction rather than a cold hard maximum. That way a game that the finer details being very important are covered while not taking much out of the games that have it more as a lolwaggle mechanic which is still sometimes fun.

I disagree that this is a huge chunk though. Processing power has kind of hit a logistical maximum with games. Look at Civ 5, Starcraft 2, Left 4 Dead 2, or hell even Crysis. Dual core 2.4 Ghz processors cover pretty much everything, and last I heard the 360 had that and more. So long as the ram isn't drained I don't think there will be any difference at all graphically.

I personally wouldn't want to play late game on a large map with a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo or Athlon X2. I personally play with a Phenom X4 @ 3.0Ghz and I would appreciate some more processing performance. The AI in that game is a killer.

Anyway the interesting thing is that Kinect uses a decent whack of GPU performance as well. It is a legitimate GPGPU application and deserves credit for that alone, especially on a DX9 GPU. Its probably the equivalent effort to 'maximising teh Cell' if you go by estimates that GPGPU is about 5* harder than Cell programming.