Now this is an interesting piece of news that has just hit the public domain. It seems that the Kinect technology was offered to Apple much before Microsoft and to be honest we are used to see such cool things from Apple, but as it happened the technology landed with Microsoft and we are seeing a SOLD OUT Kinect release from Redmond. So what really went wrong? Well, for once Apple’s secrecy and tight control over things misfired.
Apparently the Kinect’s motion sensing is powered by a technology developed by Israel military and PrimeSense was given the task to commercialize this by licensing it to technology companies in Silicon Valley. PrimeSense CEO Inon Beracha revealed that they had few meetings at Apple for the same, but given the legal agreements / NDA’s that Apple wanted to enforce on them, they decided to backout of the negotiations. The technology was so hot that PrimeSense could sell it to anyone and Inon calls Apple “a pain in the ass”.
Kinect for Xbox 360 has surely scored big and our sources tell us that there is no way Microsoft can make enough of these to meet the demand anytime soon. What works to Microsoft’s advantage is the fact that PrimeSense’s solution (hardware+software) for 3D machine vision doesn’t cost a bomb (low cost 🙂 ) and thus Kinect isn’t all that expensive, perfectly complimenting the already successful Xbox 360.
Here is a little video of myself trying out the Kinect for Xbox 360!
