We’re humbled (and thrilled) that Xbox One has been recognized for another top industry award—this time by Popular Science as a winner of their annual “Best of What’s New” awards for our new and improved Kinect for Xbox One!

Each year, editors at Popular Science look for the 100 innovations that are reshaping the future by making our world better and more efficient. We’re excited that Kinect for Xbox One was called out in the entertainment category for its more powerful camera and ability to map skeletal and muscular movement, estimate heart rate and track emotions.

“For more than a quarter century, Popular Science has devoted its December issue to the year’s most remarkable innovations. The Best of What’s New Awards is our magazine’s top honor, and the 100 awardees are selected from a pool of thousands,” said Cliff Ransom, Executive editor, “and each winner is handpicked and revolutionary in its own way. Whether they’re poised to change the world or simplify your living room, the Best of What’s New awardees challenge us to see the future in a new light.”

Kinect for Xbox One appears in the December 2013 issue of Popular Science magazine, which is currently on newsstands. 

http://news.xbox.com/2013/11/xbox-one-popular-science-award

"ability to map skeletal and muscular movement, estimate heart rate and track emotions."

I hope healthcare industry learns how to take advantage of this and use it to make access to medical services more convenient to us.

Very nice.

Nice that it can win such an award without being released or having any notable software that uses it.

What's the point in this post? Even if no software ever used kinect there is no denying that it is very good tech. It would be better as a standalone but that's not what this thread is about.

My point is that I don't much agree with the decision in the article.  I recall Microsoft releasing a simlar device a few years ago that was capable of doing all of those same things and I have yet to see it do anything revolutionary or drastically change anything.  I suppose it's "very good" tech if you consider high resolution web cameras and ir projectors as very good tech and revolutionary but I don't.  (if it were still 2010 I might even give you that the combination was a bit innovative) 

Pretty amazing tech. I saw a demo of something today that looks like how Kinect 2.0 can read your heart rate.

Plus the new time-of-flight is also quite an impressive change.

You havent seen what hospitals and universities are doing with Kinect 1? Kinect 2.0 is revolutionary for those people.

Yeah because full body motion tracking at that level of accuracy at 200 bucks is ssssssoooooo old tech....

Nifty.

By the way, the Nintendo Wii U and Playstation Vita have also made the list previously.

Dooom ...