14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Microsoft in charge of the Kinect motion tracking system is announcing that it is no longer producing the Kinect for Windows v2 special sensors and that a new Kinect Adapter is now introduced in order to make sure that the technology can still be used for PCs that are running the Windows operating system.
The official announcement explains that demand for the technology has been increasing over the past few months and that the company wants a unified future for the device.
Microsoft states, "The Kinect Adapter enables you to connect a Kinect for Xbox One sensor to Windows 8.0 and 8.1 PCs and tablets in the same way as you would a Kinect for Windows v2 sensor. And because both Kinect for Xbox One and Kinect for Windows v2 sensors are functionally identical, our Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0 works exactly the same with either."
For those who already have a Kinect for Windows v2, the company wants to continue to offer support.
The company also claims that more applications that will support motion tracking will be launched for both the Xbox One and PCs that run Windows in the coming months.
Kinect has been a problem for the Xbox One so far
When the new Microsoft home console was first announced, Microsoft talked a lot about how important the Kinect would be for the user experience.
The idea was to introduce ways to control the entire interface using voice and gestures, and most video games were also supposed to have features that used the capabilities of the motion tracking device.
The problem was that the Xbox One with Kinect was more expensive than the PlayStation 4, so the device was dropped from the core package.
Since then, a small number of video games and applications have used motion tracking, but Microsoft seems to be committed to long-term support for the idea.
Rumors are saying that in the fall the Xbox One will get a more open app environment, which might mean that smaller teams will try their hand at developing an interesting way to use Kinect on both Windows and the Xbox One.
