With all of the Xbox Kinect modding going on and Microsoft’s new menu-gesture updates to Kinect for Xbox, we’ve been wondering if Microsoft has any plans to open the Kinect motion camera up to PCs and other devices. Until now, the answer has been “no comment.” For the last two days, I’ve been asking Microsoft executives and employees at CES if they knew anything about this and the answer has always been, that it sounds like a cool idea but there are no plans at this time. Well, the BBC finally got a confirmation from the big man himself, CEO Steve Ballmer.
When asked by the BBC if the company has any plans to bring Kinect to PCs, Ballmer said it will happen, in time. “We’ll support that in a formal way at the right time and when we have an announcement to make, we’ll make it.”
Ballmer also spoke a bit about where Kinect is already heading: “Well we certainly started it out with Xbox, very focused in on gaming and we’re the number one game console in a lot of countries and at this stage we’re very happy about that. We’re trying to do two major things though: we’re trying to move beyond gaming to include the world of socialization, movies, TV, music, and we’re trying to make the whole experience accessible to everybody in the family, not just the traditional gamer.”
Do you want to make motion gestures or speak to play games and navigate menus on your PC or other products? Microsoft is certainly trying something new with Kinect. It will be interesting how they capitalize on the buzz from here.
“Working jobs you hate, to buy shit you don’t need.”
You know, sometimes I feel as if the Kinect is Microsofts excuse for not given us real gamers a better gaming system. The Xbox 360 is great and making it more like the Wii just does not cut it.
I didnt always think about it like this but I came across an article called "Can you really hate Kinect". You can find the article here: http://getyourgadgetsgoing.com/2011/01/11/can-you…
Microsoft clearly has no idea what to do with its own hardware. Motion controls, gestures, and voice recognition are the future of data input. The QWERTY keyboard layout was designed in 1873. I can type at 65 words per minute on a QWERTY keyboard but this would pail in comparison to gestures and voice recognition.
2044??