Kinect gets Windows SDK release from Microsoft

The Kinect device has been a massive seller for Microsoft in the last couple of months. The modding community have also taken to it with open arms, with many videos already on Youtube showing it doing all sorts of weird, and sometimes wonderful things.

Microsoft have announced that they are supporting this community with a software development kit for the depth sensing peripheral. This goes some way to undo the disasterous announcement a while ago that Microsoft would be taking legal action on people who reverse engineered the device for use on PC's. It didn't really halt the amuont of people who hacked the product mind you, but its nice to know that Microsoft have changed their stance and are in fact helping people use the device, outside the confines of the Xbox 360 environment.

Craig Mundie, chief research officer and Dom Mattrick, interactive entertainment head announced this at the TechForum event, saying that the official Kinect for Windows SDK will allow Kinect owners to develop software for the innovative sensor on Windows based systems.

To cover their own collective asses, Microsoft have made it clear that this SDK is strictly non commerical, meaning that people can't develop commercial products to make money from the hardware. It is not available outside the Windows environment, but that was pretty much a given. However, there are also a huge number of people using the Kinect on Linux and Mac systems. Check this out for more information.

KitGuru says: This is surely going to open the windows to more modders and wacky ideas. Certainly a good thing for Microsoft as it will sell even more units.

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