The Kinect for Windows team has been hard at work this summer, and I have some very exciting developments to share with you regarding our roadmap between now and the end of the year.

On October 8, Kinect for Windows is coming to China. China is a leader in business and technology innovation. We are very excited to make Kinect for Windows available in China so that developers and businesses there can innovate with Kinect for Windows and transform experiences through touch-free solutions.

Kinect for Windows hardware will be available in seven additional markets later this fall: Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Puerto Rico.

Map: Kinect for Windows sensor availability

In addition to making Kinect for Windows hardware available in eight new markets this fall, we will be releasing an update to the Kinect for Windows runtime and software development kit (SDK) on October 8. This release has numerous new features that deliver additional power to Kinect for Windows developers and business customers. We will share the full details when it’s released on October 8, but in the meantime here are a few highlights:

  • Enable businesses to do more with Kinect for Windows
    We are committed to opening up even more opportunities for the creation of new end user experiences. We’ll be adding features such as expanded sensor data access—including color camera settings and extended depth data—to continue to inspire innovative uses of the Kinect for Windows technology in new and different places.
  • Improve developer efficiency
    We continue to invest in making our platform easier and more powerful for developers. That’s why we’ll be releasing more tools and samples in October, such as a new sample that demonstrates a “best in class” UI based on the Kinect for Windows Human Interface Guidelines.
  • Extend our Windows tools and operating system support
    We want to make it easy for our customers to be able to build and deploy on a variety of Windows platforms. Our October update will include support for Windows 8 desktop applications, Microsoft .NET 4.5, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2012.

It has been a little more than seven months since we first launched Kinect for Windows in 12 markets. By the end of the year, Kinect for Windows will be available in 38 markets and we will have shipped two significant updates to the SDK and runtime beyond the initial release—and this is this just the beginning. Microsoft has had a multi-decade commitment to natural user interface (NUI), and my team and I look forward to continuing to be an important part of that commitment. In coming years, I believe that we will get to experience an exciting new era where computing becomes invisible and all of us will be able to interact intuitively and naturally with the computers around us.

Craig Eisler
General Manager, Kinect for Windows

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