A few hours ago, Microsoft announced that Kinect will be coming to the PC. Great news, right? Well it would be if Microsoft wasn’t trying to milk the golden cow. You see, instead of offering PC gamers the chance to experience Kinect as it is, Microsoft is releasing a brand new device for it that has minimal to no changes with the X360 version. Well, apart from a new motion camera feature called ‘near mode’ that allows the camera to be used as close as 50cm away. Not only that, but Kinect for PC is priced, significantly higher than the X360 one.
This is really surprising, especially when hackers have already proved that the original Kinect is fully compatible with the PC. Not only that, but Kinect’s responsiveness is top notch with the modded Kinect X360 on the PC. We’ve seen countless of experimentations with the Kinect X360 device on the PC, and that bloody thing works great. So you have to ask yourself; why in the world did Microsoft decide to bundle a new, PC device in a higher price when its features are the same? That’s just a rhetorical question as we already know the answer to it.
What’s more frustrating, is that there are no games taking advantage of Kinect PC. There is nothing to justify this high price. On top of that, Microsoft doesn’t even seem to care about that new PC hardware, as there are no launch titles. For crying out loud, there isn’t even a bundled game for that price.There are merely some applications on the web, but let’s be honest; there is nothing worth to write home about, especially for PC gamers. Word has it that Kinect PC will work flawlessly with Windows 8, but that OS has already gone downhill before it even got released. Well, for PC gamers at least. Unless of course Microsoft forces gamers to move on to this new OSby developing, exclusively for it, the next DirectX API.
It’s pretty obvious right now that Microsoft is simply trying to milk the golden cow. It’s really remarkable how they have bundled Kinect PC and priced it at $250, while the X360 device is priced at $150. Some might say that this price is due to Amazon’s pre-orders, but we find it hard to believe that the price will be lowered in a few weeks, when Kinect PC is scheduled for release.
Guess that the official PC drivers are to be blamed for that higher price. Balls!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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