Kinect for Windows, Out Now!

Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows has finally launched! Microsoft is heavily promoting their upgraded peripheral squarely toward, not only video games but, other functionalities outside of the industry. Microsoft believes that Kinect should move “beyond the living room into other industries such as education, manufacturing, healthcare, and retail.”

The Kinect for Windows package retails for $249, bundling together a Kinect unit and a commercial license for the hardware. This latest version of Kinect is to have hardware features such as “advanced speech and audio capabilities” as well as “improved skeletal tracking that enables control over which user is being tracked by the sensor.” The unit also features “near mode” which recognizes objects “as close as 40 centimetres in front of the sensor.”

Will these improvements be implemented in the console hardware? Is it even possible? We’ve certainly got our fingers crossed.