Appatic

Before the Kinect Camera appeared in the Xbox 360 as a ready to buy product, there were many ways to call what this kind of camera did. With one my favorites ways being "Deep Viewing". As an applied concept, The Kinect Camera is not at all new. It existed as far back as the 90's from what i remember. But the concept cameras that did the same were usually 10 times bigger and 50 times more expensive.

Fast forward to now and if you want a camera with similar functions outside of the kinect, you will be seeing at cameras that are still 5 times bigger and 10 times more expensive. And none of them coming close to having the software sophistication that the Kinect has or a smart Ambient Microphone that is in sync with the what the camera sees. Both being two of the several things that Microsoft developed and added to the Kinect Camera when they had it as a project codenamed NATAL.

But even then, The Kinect Camera is now incredibly being sold standalone for just $199 USD. Or just as an added $99 USD cost if you get it bundled with a new Xbox 360.

Given how easy is to forget how incredible that actually is. I thought it deserved to be highlighted.

At almost one year after the Kinect debuted for the world to see and with over 15 million of them being out in the world, the smallest revolution it brought was in Gaming. As it brought even bigger revolutions in media, device and computer user interactions that can now be counted in the hundreds of hacked up projects.

And to start celebrating that, the Xbox Team has released a new site to showcase some of the things that the Kinect has accomplished and what it could accomplish as the software it runs with gets better and smarter. That in turn will mean even more impressive developments using Kinect beyond the Xbox. With the Video embed-linked in this post meant as a concept of what the future of the kinect could get to be.

But i must say that as awesome the video the Xbox Team did, it is better to have a look at the new site to take the video in better context. And see how it is being used right now. But make no mistake, every scenario presented in the video you can watch in this post,  minus the playing of the classical version of "Where is my mind" from the Pixies with invisible instruments. Are all real scenarios that have already been achieved