Oh dear. It seems the Kinect-related injuries continue unabated as gamers learn the hard way that full-body motion controls do need to be approached with some care.
Today brings us the report of a woman who snapped her foot while playing the long jump game in "Kinect Sports." As KKTV in Colorado reports, 35-year-old Nikki Harding was jumping in her living room (as the game asks you to do) when she landed on her foot and broke it.
But as you can also see, one doctor has come up with a pretty good suggestion that all Kinect players should consider: Wear shoes.
"Wearing your shoes gives you more support," Dr. Jack Sharon points out. "There's more arch support and things like that."
He also points out that these injuries are simply the kind of injuries you could get from playing any kind of sport — virtual or otherwise. So it's probably a good idea to treat motion-gaming like you would any strenuous exercise. You might even want to streatch out before hand.
Perhaps a little stretching might have helped this poor blurry Kinect gamer. I mean, I'm not a doctor, but I like to play one online. And if I had to guess, I'd say this guy just snapped his Achilles tendon:
But really, this advice applies to not just those playing Kinect-controlled games — but to those playing with Sony's new PlayStation Move and Nintendo's Wii motion controls as well
As this guy proved, playing the Move-enabled volleyball game in "Sports Champions" ... while wearing your socks on a hardwood floor: Not such a great idea.
(Thanks to Kotaku for bringing this to our attention.)
For more on this topic see:
Gamer down! Kinect injuries are here
Avatar Kinect will be a very fancy chat room
Kinect hacks unleash your inner superhero (and other things)
Kinect's five most ridiculous moments
Winda Benedetti writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.
