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Kinect Fun Labs offers you some tech demos while you wait

Kinect Fun Labs offers you some tech demos while you wait

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We still haven't seen Kinect's "killer app," and Microsoft can't seem to get gameplay out of on-rails hell, but while we twiddle our motion captured thumbs waiting for a compelling gaming experience, we can finally start playing around with all that Kinect power from the 360 itself. Microsoft is launching Kinect Fun Labs, which is an app store of sorts for tech demos -- a purtified version of the wild west of PC hacks currently available for the hardware. Each downloadable "gadget" is meant to show of a discrete bit of Kinect functionality, like body scanning ("Kinect Me"), object scanning ("Build a Buddy"), and finger tracking ("Kinect Sparklers"). Everything so far seems to be first party and free, and it's not clear how Microsoft is going to make this available to third party developers -- not to mentioned the unwashed hacker masses, more of a fourth party, really. Still, it's nice to see Microsoft attempting to take clues from the community, although the larger symptom here seems to be a dearth of "real" games that use the obvious power of Kinect in truly immersive ways. Kinect Fun Labs is supposed to be available immediately, but some apps won't be available until July -- which is when Avatar Kinect (that Avatar chatting service) is also supposed to arrive.

None of this sound very interesting to you? Follow after the break anyway for a completely bizarre "tour" from the one and only Christopher Lloyd. The maddest scientist of them all.