HP made headlines late last year when their webcams were called racist. Remember that? Yeah, the Kinect might carry the same club membership.
Early reviews and hands-on reports are dropping but a GameSpot report details how ” two dark-skinned GameSpot employees experienced problems with the system’s facial recognition abilities” while lighter-skinned employees had no issues. Since the Kinect is nothing more than a few webcams with fancy software, the explanation regarding HP’s webcam incident probably applies here. Isolated incident? Perhaps, but with the Kinect launching shortly, no doubt the Internet will erupt in a firestorm if it turns out to be true.