Just after the one-year anniversary of Kinect’s release for Xbox 360, Microsoft has launched a website and blog for the Windows-based release of the product, alongside a second SDK beta.
Craig Eisler, General Manager of Kinect for Windows, commemorated the event with an email to his team made public to the world:
It all started with a revolutionary sensor and amazing software that turned voice and movement into magic. With that magical combination, last year the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft showed the world how to re-imagine gaming. This year, we’re showing the world how to re-imagine entertainment. Next year, with Kinect for Windows, we will help the world re-imagine everything else.
To mark the milestone, the Kinect for Windows team is celebrating with our own milestones: We’re starting up this blog, launching the official Kinect for Windows web site, and releasing beta 2 of the Kinect for Windows SDK. (And, yes, we will celebrate the anniversary more this evening– it’s been an amazing journey these past months!)
Eisler goes onto say a commercial release of Windows Kinect will be sometime in 2012, and more than 200 companies are currently taking place in a Kinect pilot program. Those companies’ backgrounds range from “education to healthcare, gaming to art installations, [and] manufacturing to retail.”
If you can’t wait for the commercial release, you can download the SDK right now.
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