Microsoft this morning marked the upcoming first anniversary of its Kinect for Xbox 360 with this inspiring video showing how the motion sensor is expanding beyond the world of gaming, something it calls the “Kinect Effect.” (Via WinRumors)
And the company offered up some news on that front, saying that Kinect for Windows will be available for widespread commercial use starting early next year, opening up the device to licensed applications from businesses on computers. This is a follow-up to the release of the non-commercial Kinect software development kit for academics and researchers earlier this year.
What’s odd is that Microsoft is still citing old data for Kinect sales. Anecdotally it seems that Kinect has been selling well, and driving strong sales of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console, which has been running away with the U.S. market lately.
But the company hasn’t given an update on Kinect unit sales since hitting the 10 million milestone in March of this year. We’ve asked Microsoft for fresher numbers, and we’ll update this post depending on what we hear back.
In the meantime, here’s a “Kinect Effect” infographic released by the company this morning. (Click for a larger version.)
