Articles about Kinect

Microsoft had pretty grand plans for its Kinect, where the motion-sensing device was kind of a revolution in the way games were designed. However, it didn’t really end up being the smash hit that they hoped, at least not amongst gamers. So much so that Microsoft ended up killing off the Kinect.

For years, the Xbox Kinect was one of the main features that differentiated the Xbox from other gaming consoles. It also found a fair bit of use outside of gaming, where its scanning capabilities allowed it to be used in other industries besides gaming, such as the medical industry, for example.

As some of you might recall, Microsoft officially threw in the towel for the Kinect back in October last year where they stopped the production of the device. Now it seems that in addition to killing off the Kinect’s production, they have also announced that the adapter for the Kinect has now been discontinued as well.

There has been a lot of speculation recently about the future of Microsoft’s Kinect sensor. There haven’t been any rumors or reports recently about a new iteration of the sensor. Many felt that the company was simply going to discontinue the Kinect eventually and that’s precisely what it has done. Microsoft has now decided to discontinue the Kinect for Xbox and PC.

The Microsoft Kinect was originally designed as a gaming tool, and while it was used in a couple of games, it’s starting to look like Microsoft might have accidentally created a tool that might be more useful outside of gaming. A good example would be how researchers successfully used the Kinect to scan the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

It has always been possible to hook up a Kinect sensor to PC and use it for other tasks as well but it wasn’t always this easy. Microsoft is making some changes related to the Kinect sensor. It has kept its promise of exposing depth, RGB, and infrared data from the sensor for third-party universal Windows apps and it has also launched a new driver for Windows 10 which makes […]

When the Xbox One was first released, it was bundled with the Kinect sensor whether gamers wanted to use it or not. Nowadays the sensor has been unbundled but if you were an early adopter and are looking for a new game to use the sensor with, you might be interested to learn that Kung-Fu for Kinect will be arriving on the Xbox One next month.

When the Xbox One was first released back in 2013 you couldn’t buy the console without Kinect, that’s why it was priced higher than the PlayStation 4, which worked nicely in Sony’s favor. It was just one of the factors that allowed Sony to sell significantly more PS4 units soon after launch, Microsoft realized this after a few months and unbundled Kinect from Xbox One. Now it’s even dropping support for […]

The Christmas season will soon be upon us before we know it, and this is more often than not one occassion where gifts will be exchanged, families meet up and fellowship with one another, and long lost ties are rekindled. Of course, in such social settings, it makes perfect sense to have a jolly good time with one another, and that is more often than not serenaded through the form […]

Mike Nichols, a marketing executive at Microsoft, has said that there’s a “vast majority” of Xbox One owners out there who have a Kinect and are still using the peripheral, while Nichols didn’t provide an exact number of how many Kinect units have been sold so far, he did reveal that users are not doing so much gaming with the sensor as much as they’re using it for user interface […]

Is Kinect gaming dead? This seems to be the speculation at the moment, mainly thanks to the fact that during Microsoft’s E3 2015 presentation, there was little to no mention of the Kinect or any games that would take advantage of the Kinect. Add that to how Microsoft unbundled the Kinect from the Xbox One and you’d have a pretty strong case there.However the good news is that the Kinect […]

We’re sure gamers must have been pleased when Microsoft recently announced that Cortana would be arriving on the Xbox One. We suppose this was only natural given that Cortana will be integrated into Windows 10 as well. However according to an earlier report, it was suggested that the Kinect would be required in order for Cortana to function on the console.Since Microsoft did not make it clear at that time, […]

Cortana is Microsoft’s voice assistant feature that originally debuted on Windows Phone. However given Microsoft’s strategy which is to unify their platforms, or at least make them as compatible as possible, they have announced that Cortana will be arriving on Windows 10, and now they have also announced that it will arrive on the Xbox One.This is great news for gamers as it means that they can get Cortana to […]

The Microsoft Kinect can be used for many things, such as medical purposes, educational purposes, and gaming purposes. However recently music conductor Ludovic Morlot found out that the Kinect can also be used to conduct music and as it turns out, it was a perfect fit in his orchestra.As conductors rely on gestures to command direct the orchestra or parts of it, it seemed like a natural fit to include […]

As we all know, the Microsoft Kinect technology can be used for gaming, even educational gaming, but is there really a huge difference between gaming on the Kinect and gaming on your mobile? Apart from the fact that both are different platforms, a recent study conducted by the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University found that gaming on the Kinect was more effective.According to the study, the researchers found […]

If there was one advantage that Sony’s PlayStation 4 had over the Microsoft Xbox One, it is that the former was priced $100 cheaper. The Xbox One was priced higher due to the fact that it came with a Kinect sensor bundled with the console which it seems that most gamers did not necessary want.Microsoft then reduced the price of the console to $399 and unbundled the Kinect from the […]

 Not too long ago Microsoft phased out the original Kinect for Windows sensor. It may not have worried developers too much because the company had already introduced Kinect for Windows v2. However today Microsoft has announced that it has even stopped producing the new sensor, but that doesn’t mean developers who want to build Windows apps that use Kinect won’t be able to do so.

We saw an aggressive shift in Microsoft’s strategy last year when it just couldn’t keep up to the PlayStation 4’s sales pace. The company unbundled Kinect from Xbox One and sold the console for $399, priced similarly to its rival, and then it cut the price down by $50. Microsoft gained on the PS4 during the holiday season because of this move and now it is doing something similar. Xbox One with Kinect price […]

Back in October Microsoft released the new Kinect sensor for Windows with its software development kit so it was only a matter of time before the fact of its predecessor was sealed. The company has announced today that it is going to cease the sales of original Kinect for Windows sensor in 2015, sales will be phased out over the year, which means its safe to say these units are […]

The Microsoft Kinect while designed to be a gaming accessory has found uses in other fields, especially in the medical field where it has been used to treat Parkinson’s and to aid with stroke recovery. Well here’s one more use of the Kinect that Microsoft can add to the list – the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis.This is thanks to researchers at Ohio State University who have recently been […]