It seems logic, that Kinect can't track up to six players, MS always said, the system is able to track up to 48 points of the player. This sounds like this is the maximum of points, the system is capable of tracking.
If it has to track 2 players, the number would be reduced to 24 for each player and with 6 players, the number of points would be 8, which seems not enough for me to track movements.

"Data Streams
320x240 16-bit depth @ 30 frames/sec
640x480 32-bit colour@ 30 frames/sec
16-bit audio @ 16 kHz"

What is meant by the term Data Streams? Is it the Data-Stream, that Kinect is working with? Does the above data mean, Kinect can use the 320x240 and the 640x480 Data stream simultaniously? If not, I don't understand, why the two Data Streams have different specifications and why the inferior stream (320x240, only 16-Bit colour depth) captures the same 30 frames/sec, as the superior stream.

Christian, the smaller stream is sending the depth map from the depth camera. The bigger stream is sending the captured image from the regular camera. Kinect sends the Xbox unit the depth map, image, and sound data simultaneously.

Thanks for the info.

No matter what the technical issues are, this is going to be a hard sell for Microsoft. Est. Coming in at a price point $50 higher than Sony's! Also, players want and in some cases need to have more contol options than the Kinect can provide. In the end I feel it's going to be between Sony & Nintendo to set the pace on this one. Kinect maybe cute, but it's not mainstream in the controller wars!

Take four guys playing together in the same (small?) room: it seems quite logic to imagine that their motions could easily "overlap" at times (i.e. my waving arms may be covered by my brother's body who is slightly in front of me etc.) so a reliable experience should involve only two "active" players at once. As long as the games are designed by bearing this in mind, it shouldn't be a big issue.

BTW, I guess a crowded gaming experience in a constrained space will be difficult on the PS3 Move too if the colored lights get covered by another player's body in the heat of the action...

Isn't the limitation a simultaneous player limitation, not a total player limitation?

The title of the article becomes somewhat misleading if that is the case, and the issue perhaps over-stated (after all most of the Wii Sport games are alternating multiplayer not simultaneous multiplayer).

The greatest limitation is the lag in full-body game play that is very apparent. With one or more players it will be unplayable.