The recent move from Redmond Vole come as no surprise, because at The Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas last month, Microsoft announced the roll-out of Kinect to Windows on February 1, besides, given that the company whose chip powers the Kinect, PrimeSense, said in 2010 that it expected to sign a PC partnership by the end of the year.
That apparently did not happen. However, according to a recent report from The Daily, the Redmond giant is working with third-party manufacturers recently demonstrated a couple of notebook prototypes from Asus that included a built-in Kinect sensors and ran Windows 8.
Image Source: (Digitaltrends.com)
The Daily further speculates that use of the motion sensors makes sense for gaming as well as switching between apps or as a replacement for media controls. Microsoft has already talked about desktops that include Kinect functions while at CES this year, but this is the first mention of the motion controller in a portable solution.
“The devices, which at first glance appears to be Asus netbooks operating on Windows 8, likely to use motion navigation within the metro style version of the operating system, and features an array of small sensors stretching over the top of the screen where the webcam would normally be. At the bottom of the display is a set of what appear to be LEDs,” The Daily reported.
In addition, the possibility to release cross-platform, Kinect-enabled games seems like the most obvious use of the technology. However, a smaller, mobile version of the Kinect sensor would need to target the sensitivity range to a much smaller area in order to work flawlessly with a typical 15-inch laptop screen. In addition, light sensitivity could be a problem for users that like to sit outdoors while on a laptop. Beyond games, the opportunity for disabled users to utilize gesture and voice control in a portable solution would be excellent. Using Kinect controls to operate actions within Windows Media Center could also be interesting.
Moreover, the software giant began motivating developers to experiment with the Kinect hardware after opening up the Kinect SDK during June 2011 and seeks to roll out Kinect-enabled desktops before the end of the year.
As a matter of fact, according to speculation from The Daily, Microsoft is only offering licensing the Kinect technology through manufacturers rather than developing a solution in-house. Adaptations of Kinect technology popped up all over CES 2012 with many television manufacturers such as Samsung and LG adopting motion-based controls to navigate menus and other HDTV functions. In addition, a company called SoftKinetic is also developing 3D gesture technology into portable computers. As displayed during CES this year, the technology can sense motion beyond six inches from the sensor built into the laptop.
Nevertheless, Microsoft has never exactly been secretive about the direction it is taking with Kinect. In Nov. 2009, when Kinect was still known as “Project Natal”, the company showed off a concept video. Then, Microsoft officials said that Natal would someday serve as your TV’s remote. Fast forward two years, and Microsoft’s Kinect now serves as a voice-controlled remote, allowing users to command it to search for “X-Men” games, movies, and TV shows, for instance. Chairman Bill Gates actually pitched the idea of Kinect inside of a Windows PC, but the technology never was quite picked up by the Windows team, as Gates claimed.