Microsoft confirms Kinect for Windows, launches official website, releases SDK beta

November 4, 2011 By Adam Rosenberg

Microsoft celebrates the one-year Kinect anniversary with a website launch and new beta SDK release for Kinect for Windows.

It’s not news that Kinect is coming to Windows. There’s been talk of that since the beginning of the year. All sorts of support from Microsoft ramping up to… well… to pretty much right now. The MSDN Blog celebrates today’s one-year anniversary of the Kinect’s release with the news that Kinect for Windows is an official thing, complete with its own blog (the one linked above) and official website. Beta 2 of the Kinect for Windows SDK is also here, so get to it, developers!

The new SDK offers a number of updates, including “faster skeletal tracking, better accuracy rate when it comes to skeletal tracking and joint recognition, and the ability to plug and unplug your Kinect without losing work/productivity.” The plan from here is to continue rolling out added Kinect for Windows support, with a full commercial launch set for “early 2012.”

Showing 4 comments

Marc Keegan at 9:14am 5th November 2011 I think this is great. You'll have all the nah-sayers leaving they're comments but I think its great. About tike we started evolving the way we interface with or desktops, yea it might not be ideal but at least we can figure out what to do next when we see the failings of this.
Tom Pajak at 9:05am 5th November 2011 So what the hell am I suppose to play this on...my 22" monitor...really????
TheRelativeUnknown at 9:48pm 4th November 2011 Kinect still seems like a gimmick to me, although it does have a lot of potential.
1. Ian Bell at 10:47am 5th November 2011 I would agree. We have it at home and rarely use it. It was popular for about a week. Not sure why I would want this on my PC though. Outside of gaming, what applications would the Kinnect be useful for?