Microsoft marks Xbox 360 Kinect birthday with SDK

Microsoft kicked off the first-year anniversary of Kinect this week by launching a Kinect Effect site and promising wider support. The Xbox 360's full-body motion controller has been changing education and medicine, such as teaching autistic children and letting surgeons check medical images while still in gloves, the company's communications VP Frank Shaw said. He didn't give an update on sales but reiterated that eight million Kinects sold in roughly the first two months.

The company was on track to expand the Kinect developer kit to commercial use early next year, Microsoft said. A test program for using it with paid apps beyond the Xbox already had over 200 submissions from 20 different countries, Shaw outlined.

To mark the occasion, Microsoft has posted a video (below) showing examples of how the add-on is going beyond the game system.

Kinect was originally intended to give the Xbox 360 a way of countering the then-thriving Nintendo Wii in 2010, but it was quickly hacked to work with Macs, control the home, and otherwise do things it was originally never meant to do. Microsoft at first tried to restrict modification before realizing that it could use the desire to hack to its advantage.

By Electronista Staff