Rare making cloud-based Kinect game, working with "extremely early prototype hardware"

Sometimes writing internet news is like making pictures out of clouds. There's a big one brewing over Rare's Midlands HQ. What does it look like to you? A puppy? The avenging spectre of Killer Instinct 3? Microsoft's next gen portfolio?

Among the possibilities is - MASTERFUL INTRODUCTORY METAPHOR TIE-IN ALERT - a cloud-based Kinect game. Rare needs a principal network services engineer to help "push the boundaries of the Kinect hardware with our exciting new project". The lucky applicant will help develop "ambitious cloud services within our upcoming titles". The studio is also in the market for a principal physics engineer with "direct experience of implementing real-time physics in a synchronised network environment". Cloud-based Jenga, perhaps?

A little more excitingly, a gameplay engineer is required to work on something which sounds suspiciously like an Xbox 720 spin on Lionhead's defunct, much-mourned Milo & Kate.

"In this role, you will be a crucial part of a passionate team of gameplay engineers, working with designers and producers to create stunning, groundbreaking game entity reactions & input interpretation," notes the blurb. "During prototyping you will occasionally be working with extremely early prototype hardware co-developed with teams located off-site."

Perhaps of relevance here: Rare's abandoned Kinect project Savannah, a game about raising and training lion cubs.

Microsoft posted vacancies for work on "the next generation of Natural User Interface technologies" in July. As the outfit behind Kinect Sports, you'd expect Rare to have plenty to do with that. An improved version of Kinect is among the features mentioned by authentic but possibly out-dated Xbox 720 design materials, leaked online in June.

Have a look at the sky. See what gaseous fallacies you can spot.