The sales for Kinect for the Xbox 360 have been amazing with 18 million sold this last year. The end result has been countless hours of incredible fun with family and friends dancing and playing sports in the confines of their living rooms. Kinect has also opened the door for developers and businesses to create new and innovative experiences through natural user interface (NUI) on the PC. The explosion of imaginative ideas that can be done with Kinect is something we call the Kinect Effect.
And to encourage the expansion of the Kinect Effect, early in 2011 we announced the Kinect for Windows SDK and in November it was announced that a commercial release of Kinect for Windows would happen in early 2012. Today at CES, we are announcing even more details for the commercial release of Kinect for Windows.
Starting on February 1st, the Kinect for Windows hardware and software package will be available in limited quantities (at first) at a variety of resellers and distributors for the suggested retail price of $249 (U.S.). It will be available in 12 countries – United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, and United Kingdom. The price of the Kinect for Windows hardware and software package includes a one-year warranty and access to ongoing software updates for both speech and human tracking. Later in 2012, academic pricing for Qualified Educational Users planned at $149 will be available.
In addition to support for Windows 7, Kinect for Windows will also support the Windows 8 Developer Preview (desktop apps only) which is available for developers to download today at the Windows Dev Center.
For more information on the commercial release of Kinect for Windows, I suggest reading this blog post from the Kinect for Windows Team. Also, check out the Kinect for Windows website.