Microsoft’s Xbox Prosthetic Avatars Need Better Game Settings

This week is huge in the video game world. The E3 Expo is underway and I’ve had a chance to watch it closely because Jordan’s brother, Cameron, is an avid gamer who loves to follow the industry. He has stepped away from the Xbox and invested in a PS4 so we aren’t able to enjoy the Xbox One games unless one of the kids wants to save up and invest in a new gaming system. (I bought them a Nintendo Switch earlier this year.)

Cam and Jordan (with helper arm) would play Kinect for hours.

That said, we loved the Xbox for many years, especially because it offered Jordan some games that were a lot of fun for her to play without needing to juggle a standard two-handed gaming controller. The Kinect games made it possible to do some games without controllers all together. In others, she only needed one hand.

But we also hit games that were a lot of fun but she couldn’t play them without a prosthetic arm because the Kinect couldn’t deal with the lack of half of her left arm. I’ve complained about this problem for years to representatives of Microsoft at blog conferences but I know I wasn’t talking to the right people.

Fast forward to this week and Microsoft announced brand new avatars in the Xbox – including options to show off prosthetic arms. We think that is SUPER cool.
The avatars were a part of reveal during E3 that you can watch here:

Great start, Microsoft. We love the inclusion of prosthetic in your avatars. Up next: Let’s add customizable settings for the Xbox Kinect so a user can select his or her limb length. That would help so many more people enjoy Kinect games!