Nyko Zoom Reduces Kinect Play Distance By 40 Percent

The Kinect is a pretty amazing piece of gaming engineering.  Unfortunately, your dorm room is amazingly small (due to your pockets being amazingly shallow), making it impossible to find the necessary free space to play motion games.  The Nyko Zoom can change all that.

A clip-on accessory that clamps over the Kinect’s lenses, it reduces the required range for the Xbox 360 controller to read your motions.  That means, you no longer need the usual 10 feet of free space that Kinect gamers have to clear, making it possible to play in the cramped confines of your tiny inner-city bedroom.

The Nyko Zoom is literally clip and play — there’s no software to install and no configurations to set.  Just put it on the Kinect and go about your merry gaming activities (we’re not sure if the same will hold true when you port the Kinect to your PC, though).  It’s compatible with all existing Xbox 360 Kinect titles, will still allow up to two players, and won’t delay any of the processing.  The only caveat is some pictures and videos taken with the camera controller will be zoomed out with darkened corners.

Boasting up to 40% reduction in player proximity, the specially-designed wide angle optical lenses on the accessory will let you play as close as 3 feet away (will vary depending on the games).  While that probably still won’t let you set up an Xbox 360 station inside the stock room at work (sorry guys), it does open up a lot of tight spaces to motion-based play.

You can now get the Nyko Zoom from whatever stores you score your gaming stash, priced at $29.99.

[Nyko]