We were recently wowed by a little gadget called Leap Motion which allows you to control your Windows 8 PC using motion gestures, but that could soon be shown up by Kinect 2.0 for the Xbox One. Microsoft has confirmed the games console accessory will also work with Windows PCs.
Revealed on Tuesday alongside the Xbox One, Kinect 2.0 – or ‘the new Kinect’, as Microsoft is calling it – is a big upgrade from the original accessory which was launched for Xbox 360. The technology has gone from tracking our limbs for fun family games to being a professional tool that can read your heartbeat through thin air.
At the Xbox One launch event in Seattle this Tuesday several Microsoft executives confirmed that the accessory would come to PC, just as the original Kinect did before it.
“We will bring this to PC,” said Kinect project manager Scott Evans to Shacknews, whilst Microsoft’s VP of interactive entertainment business Ben Kilgore told Polygon that Kinect 2.0 would come to Windows “at some point down the line.”
The new Kinect features upgraded internals including a Full HD 1080p camera with a much wider angle lens. Speech recognition is now much more natural and Kinect can process multiple voices at the same time. Accuracy is hugely improved, with Kinect now able to detect movement in your fingers and shoulders as well as weight shifting onto each leg. Thanks to IR sensing it’ll also work in the dark, and it can detect your heartbeat as you game.
It’s not yet clear whether Microsoft will repeat history by launching a separate Kinect accessory specifically for PC or whether the unit that comes bundled with the Xbox One will be cross-compatible, but we’ll hopefully find out more next month at E3 in Los Angeles.