Although it hasn’t yet proven to be quite the gaming revolution Microsoft was hoping for, all it takes is a search of the phrase “Kinect hack” on Youtube to see that Microsoft’s motion-sensing device has some impressive potential. Until now, though, the system hasn’t been available in China except via gray market Xbox 360 imports, and since the Xbox Kinect only works with the console — a system that most Chinese people don’t have — interest in China was pretty limited.
But Windows is a platform that’s as ubiquitous as water in China, and Kinect for Windows stands a much better chance of widepsread acceptance there. Recongnizing this, Microsoft will launch Kinect for Windows in China this month. If you’re a Chinese consumer, though, you can’t run out and buy a Kinect just yet; this release is really only for developers and comes with the Kinect SDK so that devs can create new applications for the Kinect on the Windows platform. That may be disappointing news to gamers who were hoping to play Kinect games on their Windows PCs, but it should be good news to everyone in the long run, as creative devs with the hardware and the official SDK should be able to create cool applications Microsoft couldn’t even dream of so that when the Kinect is made available for consumer purchase, it’ll be useful for a lot more than just dancing games.
It’s not clear when China can expect a consumer launch of Kinect for Windows, but it certainly seems to be quite a ways down the road. That’s good news for the folks behind the CT-510, China’s motion-sensing entertainment system that has been described by some as being a bit of a Kinect ripoff. The CT-510’s hardware doesn’t work with Windows and costs $600, so the launch of a consumer-facing Kinect that would almost certainly cost a fraction of the CT-510’s price and would work on Windows could be very bad news for CT-510 developers Eedoo.
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