Microsoft plans to bring Xbox One's Kinect to the PC

Microsoft’s motion controller – the Kinect – won’t be exclusive to the Xbox One. Kinect Program Manager Scott Evans has told Shacknews that the company plans to bring the new version of the Kinect that has been made for the Xbox One to the PC. “We will bring this to PC,” he said. “We will have more information soon.”

The previous Kinect was also brought over to the PC, although it took a long time for Microsoft to release the official PC version of the SDK for the motion controller. The company presumably took long because it had to port the Kinect’s software from the Xbox 360 version to the PC. This will be easier with the Xbox One thanks to the new console’s x86 architecture, which is the same architecture that PCs run on.

The new Kinect will be coming to the PC

Microsoft unveiled the new Kinect alongside the Xbox One in an event earlier this week. Instead of just specialising in gaming, however, the company has gone for an all-in-one approach with features on the new console aimed at taking over the living room instead of just offering a gaming machine. The Xbox One was unveiled during an event held by Microsoft last night.

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The console uses many of the voice commands that were earlier introduced as part of the Kinect. There are also quite a few new ones. For example, saying “Xbox On,” will start the console and bring you to your personalised home screen. The console itself has many new features. You can navigate and watch live TV from your cable, telco or satellite set-top box through the Xbox One. This feature seems to be US centric. We have no idea if it will work on Indian set-top boxes.

For more information about the Xbox One, you can check out our specifications review.