Connecting with Kinect via Kinect Fun Labs

-- Air Band: FREE --

The third add-on for Kinect Fun Labs, Air Band offers a one and two player Kinect experience that showcases the position, body-sensing, location-sensing, and motion-sensing capabilities of the Kinect system, Air Band transforms your room into a stage and turns you into a superstar -- at least a superstar of the world of air guitar and other air instrument play...

Developed by Relentless Software and published by Microsoft Game Studios in August 2011, the game supports local play for one to two players as well as co-op play for the same number, supports System Link, and HDTV in 720p. It has build-in Dolby digital audio, and online multi-player capabilities so your two local players can be joined by band mates via the Internet and rock out to the full band experience. Air Band is not a music-making app -- rather it is exactly what it appears to be -- an app that summons ghostly neon instruments that you can play for fun and maybe for exercise, though that is not really the official focus of the app. While it originally has a 240 Microsoft Points cost, it is currently free on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, so the price is right. Air Band has a total of 8 Achievements worth 50 Gamerscore points, including:

-- Get the Set List (5 G) Play each of the five songs in one play session (primary player rewarded)

-- Guitar Star (5 G) Play both left and right handed guitars in one song (primary player rewarded)

-- Hyper Active (5 G) Reach maximum activity level on any instrument (primary player rewarded)

-- Making it Big Time (10 G) Share a performance containing all three instruments (primary player rewarded)

-- One Man Band (5 G) Play each of the three instruments in one song (primary player rewarded)

Orchestral Maneuverings (10 G) Two players perform each combination of instruments in one song (primary player rewarded)

-- Promo Shot (5 G) Share a photo on KinectShare.com (primary player rewarded)

-- Video Virtuoso (5 G) Share a video on KinectShare.com (primary player rewarded)

As you can see from the notes on many of these, they can only be unlocked by the gamer who initiated game play, not the gamers who join game play.

Avatar Kinect was used to present part of the 2011 CES Keynote Address by Microsoft's Steve Balmer