516 days

Winda Benedetti

Kinect sex game is in the works (shudder)

We knew it was only a matter of time before someone made the first Kinect sex game. And sure enough...

From the folks who created "3D SexVilla," "Fetish 3D" and "3D Slut," comes the first official prototype of a game that lets players use Microsoft's new motion sensing gadget to get down and dirty.

"The Kinect Controller is astonishing new technology that allows users to experience cybersex like never before!" Brad Abram, VP of Business Development for adult gaming company ThriXXX, enthused in a press release. “It’s novel, sexy, social, age-spanning, crazy, and a rush to have virtual control at this level.”

The folks at ThriXXX posted a video of their game (still a work in progress) on YouTube Wednesday. The video was then yanked by YouTube for violating the site's policy on nudity and sexual content. But it has re-appeared on YouTube here. At least for now. (Warning: That is a dirty dirty link ... also, it's totally NSFW.)

The demo of this as-yet-to-be-named game shows a disembodied hand groping a couple of stiffly animated women. Remember Thing from The Addams Family? Yeah, it's sort of like that. Creepy and all together ooky.

In the video, a developer hides his face behind a blur as he demonstrates how he's able to wave his real hand around in the air to make the digital hand in the game paw at virtual boobies.

The Kinect sensor, which has been on the market for less than two months, can track the movements of a person's entire body but is especially good at reading hand gestures. So using the device in a "game" this way does make some, uh, sense. But the ThriXXX press release promises that this is just the beginning:

Users will ultimately be able to use full body or hand gestures, voice commands and even real world sex toy objects like vibrators to control interactions in-game and between two active participants.

The ThriXXX press release says the software is in early alpha stage testing but claims it will be ready for launch in 2011.

Still, I remain skeptical that ThriXXX's "Sex Central" game (yeah, I made that up myself) will ever actually make it to market. In fact, Abramtold CNET that his company does not have approval from Microsoft to use Kinect in this way.

"We do not have permission from anyone on any of this stuff, and have been using stuff from the hacker community to do a working prototype, following what [is] going on in that world," he said.

Indeed, hackers, roboticists and tinkerers have had a heyday with Kinect, altering the gadgets to do all sorts of amazing things they were never meant to do (play air guitar, hover off the ground and let people reenact the giant piano scene from the movie "Big," among other things).

Despite some initial saber rattling, Microsoft has largely embraced this non-threatening experimentation. But one can imagine, the company might not be so easy going when it comes to having its family friendly game controller sullied by these adult pursuits.

"We have no idea how [Microsoft] will react...but we think the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak," Abram told CNET.

It also appears ThriXXX doesn't tend to deliver its games through the usual U.S. gaming channels any way.

"In regards to commercial games, we do not sell at retail, do not have a need for [game ratings], and everything is done offshore in Europe," said Abram, suggesting they might even give it away free as part of the open-source community efforts.

Still, those gamers hoping to play some Kinect porn probably shouldn't hold their breath. A visit to plain ol' "3D SexVilla" will probably have to do for quite a while.

For some more on this topic, check out:
Kinect sex – what's the holdup?
Kinect hacker creates Air Guitar Hero
Kinect's five most ridiculous moments

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Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.