The Kinect has certainly won a lot of fans with its novelty value, but that can quickly wear off for technical devices. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer asserts that the best is yet to come for the motion sensing device, however.
“Like any other thing that is new, we came out with a set of applications to show off the platform, to bring others in,” Ballmer said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. “Our second generation is now happening.”
“We announced a partnership today with Sesame Street and National Geographic to bring kids’ learning and entertainment to the Kinect. You’ll see a raft of new games from us and third-party publishers this holiday,” Ballmer detailed. “We’ve announced and demonstrated work that we’re doing with people who provide video content — live TV as well as other
, etc. content — to really let you access and find [content] and control it, completely via the Kinect, gesture and voice being a part of that. Bing-powered by the way, that will be out this holiday season. So you’re going to see a range of important innovations coming to Kinect on Xbox this holiday.”
Ballmer also proudly pointed to the homebrew environment for Kinect, and that the Kinect toolkit for Windows has helped foster this innovation. “That kind of opens up a whole new sphere of innovation with Kinect and the PC. This holiday I think you’ll see an explosion of things around the Xbox and Kinect,” said Ballmer.
Source: Gamasutra